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Professor who developed the Pill predicts brave new world of voluntary sterilisation and IVF will render sex “just for fun” (10 November 2014)

Date: 10/11/2014
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Professor who developed the Pill predicts brave new world of voluntary sterilisation and IVF will render sex “just for fun”

The scientist who invented the Pill has suggested that in the future more people will turn to IVF to have children – and sex will be demoted to being “just for fun”.

The Daily Mail reports that Professor Carl Djerassi, 91, has predicted the Pill will be redundant by 2050, as more people opt to be sterilised and store their sperm and eggs to enable them to have children when they want.

Prof Djerassi said that IVF could be used as an insurance policy to guarantee parenthood in the future – and added that advances in the procedure will create a “mañana” generation of people to want to delay parenthood until they feel ready.

The scientist is one of the researchers who contributed to the development of the Pill in 1951.

However, with sterilisation and IVF mooted as the contraception of choice for the future, the Pill would become redundant and the notion of sex as a one-to-one commitment between two people wishing to have children together may also become redundant.

The prediction echoes Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World in which love is banned, but individuals “engage” with others for casual sex, which is encouraged.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Prof Djerassi said:

“The vast majority of women who will choose IVF in the future will be fertile women who have frozen their eggs and delayed pregnancy.

“I predict that many of these women will be fertilised by IVF methods because of the advances in genetic screening – and once that happens, then IVF will start to become a normal non-coital method of having children.

“For them, the separation between sex and reproduction will be 100 per cent.”

Prof Djerassi expressed doubts over the male Pill, saying that it might have a negative impact on sperm quality –and would also take too long to test.

Fertility can be affected by many different factors – in men, having mumps as a child can cause fertility problems. But diet, alcohol and drug use and medical treatments like chemotherapy can all result in infertility or fertility problems.

Research has shown that men who are heavy smokers or drinkers may suffer from poor sperm quality.

Lifestyle choices such as drug use and alcohol use may also result in a higher rate of birth defects.

Older mothers traditionally have been blamed for birth defects in children because women are born with eggs (ova) which age over time, whereas men produce sperm continually. However, researchers found that because sperm production is an ongoing process, changes in DNA of sperm are more likely to occur over time, potentially causing older fathers to have children with birth defects.

In February 2014, Dr Kari Stefansson, of genetic research company Decode Genetics has warned men not to delay fatherhood, after research showed older fathers are also more likely to produce children with autism and schizophrenia.

Sexually transmitted infections (STI) such as Chlamydia can also cause infertility in women and in the case of parents with the STI syphilis, birth defects in children can occur.

Prescription drugs such as thalidomide and tranquillisers like the benzodiazepine chlordiazepoxide (commonly known under the brand name Librium) can also cause birth defects if taken in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Thalidomide was prescribed in the 1950s and 1960s to treat morning sickness in pregnant women, resulting in a generation which saw children born with shortened limbs. The effects of Thalidomide use have been found to continue down through the generations, with the grandchildren of Thalidomide victims now being born with shortened limbs.

IVF procedures involve egg screening and egg selection, to enable parents whose families may carry gene mutations which increase the risk of certain diseases such as haemophilia and cancers to have a baby free from the defective gene.

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