On July 25th 1978 in Oldham, England...
...a baby girl named Louise was born
Unlike any baby before her...
...Louise was conceived in a Petri dish...
...by a remarkable new procedure known as in vitro fertilisation...
...or IVF
Since then millions of so-called “test-tube babies” have been born
Today 1 in 60 American births is thanks to IVF...
...and other fertility treatments...
...which have spawned a booming new industry in many different countries
But are fertility businesses making promises they can’t keep?
Sacha Nauta can help answer that
She’s the public policy editor at The Economist
So there’s a lot going on in the fertility industry
Firstly you’re seeing a lot of growth in people seeking out IVF treatment
IVF provides a valuable option for people...
...who, for whatever reason, are unable to conceive
But there’s another emerging market
There’s quite a lot of exciting stuff going on...
...around so-called fertility “preservation”
That’s freezing of egg or sperm cells for IVF in the future...
...often years later
Egg freezing is a relatively new procedure...
...and was officially considered experimental in America until 2012
It’s actually aimed at sort of millennials...
...people in their 20s who aren’t thinking about having babies at all...
...but who might want to preserve the idea of having kids
It opens up the idea that as a person at sort of peak fertility...
...in say your mid-20s...
...you can take your cells, put them on ice...
...and in theory take them out whenever suits you...
...when you’re ready to have a baby
This is what egg-freezing businesses appear to promise...
...a chance to put parenthood on ice...
...which appeals to young people who are increasingly interested...
...in having children later, for a variety of reasons
What clinics sell you tends to be time or women’s empowerment...
...or taking control of your destiny
All of these things, that you know...
...chime with what younger women right now would like to have
And women are increasingly buying in
The number of egg-freezing procedures has grown rapidly...
...over the past decade
The process isn’t cheap
Egg freezing can cost $15,000-$20,000 per cycle...
...which is a single batch of eggs
It often requires multiple cycles to increase chances of success
Egg freezing and similar services...
...are part of the burgeoning women’s-health industry dubbed “femtech”...
...and are attracting plenty of interest from investors
So we’ve seen a lot of particularly private-equity money go into the sector...
...as well as venture capital into the more early stage stuff
Investment in fertility firms grew from...
...less than $200m in 2009 to $624m in 2018
Investors are attracted to the growth prospects...
...high-profit margins...
...and recession-proof demand
Investors, businesses, and prospective parents all stand to benefit
But the reliability of these services might be oversold
IVF has a success rate of about 25-30% per cycle
But that doesn’t tell you much. It depends on who you are...
...it very much depends on how old you are
On freezing I’m a bit more cautious
There it’s really early days
Birth rates from frozen eggs should be taken with a grain of salt
Most women who have had their eggs frozen have not yet retrieved them
So the sample sizes are small
It’s just too soon to draw reliable conclusions
Still, clinics might misrepresent the data...
...to encourage freezing
An egg-freezing clinic might tell you “our success rate is X”...
...and you might think “oh that sounds good”
What they may not tell you is that...
...that is based on donor eggs of 25-year-olds
Whereas actually you’re a 38-year-old which is the average age...
...of most people who go to egg clinics...
...and therefore your chances are much lower
So you are not that number that they’re showing you
I think the most important caveat is that...
...there is no such thing as a guarantee to have a baby
And one of my concerns in the industry right now...
...is that the caution isn’t being sold enough
It may well help you one day...
...but there’s also a very good chance that it won’t
There is also a lack of sufficient regulation of fertility services...
...especially in America
Freezing clinics in particular—you know a young new industry
I think there’s a lot of problems there
There have been a few quite well-published scandals...
...around loss of these cells, loss of embryos
– I think about who they could have been...
...and what they would have been like...
...and yeah, those were our future children
And what we’re seeing right now is when these kind of...
...dramatic things do happen...
...it’s clear that it’s a totally underregulated sector...
...where there are no clear standards for how you look after these cells
So what’s needed from the fertility sector?
It’s honesty—it is just more honesty about...
...the limits of the science, honesty about the costs...
...and yes more investment in R & D...
...which is I think a great thing there is still so much more to explore...
...and so much room for improvement around these treatments...
...and clearly a growing market