background: in modern biomedicine, there is an increasing speed of development of new ideas and technologies and, consequently, increasing speed of new applicable knowledge. the rapid advances in medicine and biotechnology during recent decades, is accompanied with important discussions about new questions and dilemmas in the field of professional ethics. the increased recognition of ethical pr...

The main perinatal complications of assisted reproduction include congenital malformation, chromosomal aberrations, multiple pregnancy, and prematurity. Earlier studies and in vitro fertilization (IVF) registries showed that there was no increased incidence of congenital malformations in children conceived by IVF/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). However, a large Australian study has fou...

Imprinted genes exhibit a parent-of-origin specific pattern of expression. Such genes have been shown to be targets of molecular defects in particular genetic syndromes such as Beckwith-Wiedemann and Angelman syndromes. Recent reports have raised concern about the possibility that assisted reproduction techniques, such as in vitro fertilization or intracytoplasmic sperm injection, might cause g...

The Canadian province of Quebec recently amended its Health Insurance Act to cover the costs of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). The province of Ontario recently de-insured IVF. Both provinces cited cost-effectiveness as their grounds, but the question as to whether a public health insurance system ought to cover IVF raises the deeper question of how we should understand reproduction at the social...

The past three decades have witnessed revolution in reproductive medicine. Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 (1), there has been an expansion in the number of vitro fertilization treatment worldwide. In the first European Register publication (2) 203,893 IVF/ICSI were reported by eighteen European countries, and by 2002, this number rose to 324,238 cycles from twenty-five countries, accou...

The conventional ovarian stimulation protocols currently applied have several drawbacks arising from the intense ovarian stimulation and from the high financial cost. Recently, new concepts such as mild stimulation and friendly in vitro fertilisation have rapidly acquired great popularity among infertile patients although the medical world is still reluctant to apply these protocols generally. ...