From the very first test tube baby born in England in 1978, the future looks bright for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the U.S.
The number of test-tube babies born in the United States set a record in 2012, as reported by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) in their annual report.
The data was gathered from 379 clinics under the SART, which is 90 percent of infertility clinics in the US. Records showed that in 2012 alone, there were 165,172 IVF procedures done, which resulted in the birth of 61,740 babies.
Compared with the numbers for 2011, it was an increase of about 2,000 in-vitro fertilized babies, and accounted for over 1.5 percent of the total 3.9 million babies born in the country in 2012.
The data also revealed that the average age of first-time mothers is rising. From 21.4 years in 1970, the average age of women giving birth for the first time is now 26 years. These numbers are indicative of the fact that as people age, fertility becomes an issue.
In 2012, IVF physicians transferred less embryos per patient when compared to 2011's numbers. The SART found that in 2012, 15 percent of IVF patients 35 years old and younger were using only one embryo at a time, compared with 4 percent in 2011.
IVF physicians used to transfer multiple embryos to increase the possibility of pregnancy, but this often resulted in the birth of triplets that have low birthweights and other health conditions.
An earlier SART report said that women under 35 who undergo in-vitro fertilization are 10 percent more successful at giving live birth compared with those who are over 42 years old.
"It's important for people to understand that women over 35 have the highest percentage of failures," said Miriam H. Zoll, author or the book Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies, and an international health and human rights advocate. She also said that, "these treatments have consistently failed two-thirds of the time since 1978," the same year that the first test-tube baby was born.
The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology stated that only 350,000 of the 1.5 million assisted reproductive cycles performed worldwide resulted in a live birth, which translated to a global failure rate of 77 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has set the overall failure to be at nearly 70 percent.
Despite the very low success rate of IVF, the US still managed to set a record for the number of IVF live births in 2012. However, Zoll mentioned in an interview that, despite all of the studies available on IVF processes and success rates, "What is seriously missing is longitudinal studies that are tracking the health of women going through these treatments because we have no real information to understand what the long-term effects of these treatments are on women's health."
