I read with interest the article by Scherrer et al. This research was largely advertised in a Swiss television show, 36.9, on April 4, 2012. In this show, it was clearly evident that children conceived by assisted reproduction techniques were informed of the hypothesis of the study before the measurements, that they were at risk to be victims of heart infarction at a very young age, and that th...

Is there a more important situation where one should apply the precautionary principle than in assisted reproductive technologies (ART)? Although ART are formidable answers to the distress of couples having difficulties to conceive, these technologies are far from being totally well controlled. The worldwide increasing demand on ART is by itself an alarming situation that should promote more re...

BACKGROUND Although gamete receipt or donation has become an integral part of infertility management, previous research in the field of social attitudes and intention to use medical technologies is limited. The aim of this paper was to investigate people's intentions to receive or donate sperm, oocyte or uterus (surrogacy) and to identify possible motivational patterns explaining this intention...

OBJECTIVE To review the results of opinion polls on community attitudes to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and other aspects of assisted reproductive technology over a 20-year period. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Fourteen Australia-wide interview surveys that included questions relating to IVF were carried out between July 1981 and November 2001 as part of regular Morgan polls of community a...

BACKGROUND The field of infertility medicine has witnessed a surge of scientific developments in recent years, but research on public attitudes towards infertility treatments has remained minimal. This study examined the social and demographic factors that affect women's attitudes towards assisted reproductive technology (ART) in general, as well as their opinions of specific issues related to ...

This study suggests that paternal age may be inversely associated with reproductive outcome, as demonstrated by a decline in fertilization, blastocyst formation, implantation and cryopreservation rates with advancing age.

Epidemiological studies demonstrate a relationship between pathological events during foetal development and future cardiovascular risk and the term 'foetal programming of cardiovascular disease' has been coined to describe this phenomenon. The use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) is growing exponentially and 2-5% of children are now born by this procedure. Emerging evidence indicat...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the relationship between assisted reproduction technology (ART) and parental mental representations during late pregnancy and early parenthood. STUDY DESIGN Women (n=25) following ART pregnancies were compared with their partners (n=23) and with women following spontaneous conceptions (n=39). Subjects were interviewed on mental representations at late gestation and three...

BACKGROUND The assessment of treatment success in clinical trials when multiple (repeated) doses (courses) are involved is quite common, for example, in the case of infertility treatment with assisted reproductive technology (ART), and medical abortion using misoprostol alone or in combination with mifepristone. Under these or similar circumstances, most researchers assess success using binomia...

In 2010, the World Health Organization established new reference values for human semen characteristics that are markedly lower than those previously reported. Despite using controlled studies involving couples with a known time to pregnancy to establish the new limits, the reference studies are limited with regard to the population analyzed and the methods used for semen evaluation. The presen...