What are the clinical trials currently being done regarding infertility?
The field of infertility is really very new. Virtually everything that we now know about the field we have learned in the last 30, perhaps as few as 20, or maybe even 10, years because the field has expanded so much. The world's first IVF baby was born in 1978. That's nearly 30 years ago, but prior to that the knowledge about how eggs and sperm interact and how all of this happens in the body was really very poorly understood. As a consequence there are still so many things that we do not understand and such a wealth of information that we are gathering really on a year by year basis. My own interest happens to be in embryo implantation; exactly how it is that the embryo interacts with the uterus and allows implantation to occur, because every one of us here is living proof that implantation had to work at that particular point in time. It's a very complicated sort of dance of love, if you will, between the embryo and the endometrium (the lining of the uterus that allows the embryo to implant). There are lots of investigations that are going on; how to help sperm fertilise eggs, how to control egg quality, how to control the number of eggs that a woman produces during any one time. Never mind the follow-up kinds of studies; is all of this safe? Are we causing any harm? Are we doing any damage to the patients themselves? How about the children that are born after infertility treatment; are they, in fact, in any increased danger as a result of the fertility treatment? So, there are as many studies and investigations going on as there are really fertility specialists in the field.
