IVF opens the door to assisted reproduction

   The birth of a new life not only represents the continuation of life, but also brings joy, hope and peace to the family. Still, the “infertility phenomenon” has prevented many families from having this natural desire. It was not until 1978 that the world’s first IVF was born in England, opening the door to assisted reproduction.  After the birth of the world’s first IVF baby, the first IVF baby was born in 1988 at the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University amidst the expectations of many infertile couples. 17 years later, this “China’s first” child is growing up healthy and happy like other children of the same age.  With the widespread promotion of IVF technology, fertility centers have sprung up in various provinces to nurture IVF babies, and countless infertile couples have been able to fulfill their dreams of becoming parents. However, due to cultural and awareness differences, there are still misconceptions about IVF in China.  One in a hundred children in the UK has an IVF baby Currently, fertility disorders have become a global problem. The World Health Organization has released statistics that 8% of the global population of childbearing age has fertility problems, with about 50 to 80 million people suffering from this problem. In China, about 20 million people of reproductive age have infertility problems.  After the world’s first IVF baby, Louise, 1.4 million children were born worldwide with the help of IVF, and IVF is unquestionably accepted by society.  Europe is a pioneer in artificially assisted reproductive technology, and one in every 100 children in the UK is now an IVF baby. In the Nordic countries, it is quite common for people to reproduce through in vitro fertilization. In 1998, an average of 4 out of every 100 births in that country were IVF babies. 100,000 assisted conception procedures were performed in the United States in 2000, resulting in 35,000 IVF babies, or 1 percent of all births.  Today, in developed countries, IVF is no longer the “alternative baby” that people talk about. As more IVF babies come into the world and grow up healthy, it has been found that IVF babies born through artificially assisted reproduction are healthy and normal, no different from children born from normal pregnancies.  IVF, also known as in vitro fertilization, is currently the most widely used assisted reproductive technology in the world. “IVF is not a baby that grows up in a test tube, but rather a few eggs are removed from the ovaries and combined with the man’s sperm in a laboratory to form an embryo, which is then transferred to the uterus where it can be implanted in the mother’s uterus and become pregnant.  Normal conception requires the sperm and the egg to meet in the fallopian tube, where they combine to form a fertilized egg, which then returns to the uterine cavity to continue the pregnancy. Therefore, IVF can be simply understood as the replacement of the fallopian tube by a laboratory test tube and is called “in vitro fertilization”. IVF is the name given to a baby born through assisted reproductive technology. The baby is actually inside the mother’s body from conception to delivery, and only grows for the first two days in a test tube or vessel.  For couples who are unable to have children normally and want to have children in particular, IVF may be a good option to help them fulfill their dreams.  Mr. Liu and his wife, who is a businessman in Harbin, have been married for ten years, and his wife has not been pregnant, and as they grow older, the couple’s dream of having a child is becoming more and more urgent. A few days later, the embryo was transferred to Mr. Liu’s wife’s body, and ten months later, the family welcomed their long-awaited baby – a healthy baby girl.  According to Prof. Han Xiangyang, director of the Institute of Family Planning Science and Technology of Harbin Medical University, the creator of IVF in the eastern provinces, and a famous expert in reproductive medicine in China, the first hospital of Harbin Medical University, the most representative technology in modern assisted reproduction is the three-generation IVF technology. In vitro fertilization and embryo transfer, the first generation of IVF technology, is mainly for female infertility; single sperm microinjection fertilization in oocyte plasma, the second generation of IVF technology, is mainly for male infertility; the third generation of IVF is mainly to solve the problem of human eugenics and eugenics, so that patients with genetic diseases can give birth to healthy children, based on microscopic operation, after a clear single-cell genetic diagnosis, and then transplant a healthy, non-genetic child into the uterus. The third generation of IVF is a more complex and high tech technique that is based on microscopic operation, single cell genetic diagnosis, and then transferring healthy embryos to the uterus without genetics, which is also known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.