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Christopher Jones is an American vintage race car driver, innovator and venture investor with a strong interest and PhD in health economics, particularly as it applies to improving outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. In the early 2000s, he presented a report, first to then-British Chancellor Gordon Brown [1] and then in the House of Commons, that led to policy changes to the maximum allowable number of transferred embryos during the course of a woman's in vitro fertilisation treatment. The Times in London reported that Jones' report induced immediate action by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority [2] but divided fertility doctors: half viewed this as a good policy from a public health vantage point, the other half viewed the move as over-regulation in personal affairs. Regardless, Jones showed in a co-authored letter that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that twins are six-times more likely to occur following in vitro fertilisation, compared with natural conceptions, even when only one embryo was implanted. [3] This led to cost-reductions to the National Health Services of GBP 60 million per year that would otherwise have been spent on ineffective treatments or neonatal intensive care due to excessive numbers of multiple births. [2] He was appointed director of bilateral collaborations at the Center for Study of Multiple Birth, a non-profit devoted entirely to research into the health of multiples. [4] Although few had heard of such a trend in 2003, Jones predicted and found that medical tourism and more particularly reproductive tourism away from the United Kingdom, along with an epidemic of multiple births, would be the likely results of fertility regulation. [5]
Jones earned a bachelor's degree with distinction in biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied genetics and chronic disease under the supervision of James V. Neel and evolution in classes taught by Richard D. Alexander.
Jones then matriculated in Christ Church, Oxford University earning two post-graduate degrees, starting with a Master's in Human Biology. While at Christ Church, he was elected Social Secretary of the Graduate Common Room.
In the early 2000s Jones was president of Oxford's controversial banking forum. This forum brought international financial services leaders from around the world to discuss frank academic issues. Attendees included Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell, inventor of the currency known as the Euro. During the Oxford years, Jones won a fellowship from the Bertarelli Foundation in Switzerland, created by Ernesto Bertarelli and Donna Bertarelli Spaeth, to develop a cost-effective framework of fertility treatment that would preserve the dignity of human life. After earning his doctorate in health economics/medical sciences from Oxford, he became a junior faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
Jones grew up in Gilford, New Hampshire to a family of early New England settlers on his paternal side (Jones and Tabor). His grandfather Art Jones was stationed as a U.S. Naval officer in Newfoundland. His grandfather's family came from Waitsfield, Vermont. Art was born in New Hampshire however to a military family and played minor league baseball in Penacook. Chris' great-great-grandfather, Horace Austin Warner "HAW" Tabor, of Hungarian extraction, hailed from Holland Vermont (as did his first wife and Mayflower descendant, Augusta Pierce), but left stonecutting and the East Coast snow to become the legendary silver baron, senator and first lieutenant governor of Colorado. HAW was a republican, anti-slavery advocate, and benefactor to the arts. The Tabor Opera House was once the largest theatre west of the Mississippi. It attracted the likes of Oscar Wilde. Jones' maternal grandfather was a U.S. Marine.
Jones has from time to time raised funds for his friends in the scientific and bohemian communities, to launch projects of profound artistic, scientific and intellectual merit. In 2008 Jones assisted his Motown friends to market the "Martin Luther King Feature Film" in the Gulf, starting in Dubai. Jones led Motown legend Mark Davis, producer of the soundtrack to the film Animal House to a meeting with His Royal Highness Sheikh Saud of Ras El Khaimeh. The film was renamed Selma after the rights were purchased by Steven Spielberg. In 2009 Jones led a British television delegation to visit His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Dr. Jones is writing a book on optimizing flexibility in the workplace, citing examples from on the spot observations in American and European companies. The book focuses on the modern need to speak both academic and business languages, and to use those languages to identify points of commonality, while highlighting the opportunities and challenges of being within the "white space" on organizational charts.
With another inventor and colleague, Jones owns a United States Patent for a novel way of freezing specimens, [6] and he continues to invent and license products to medical and conservation initiatives.
In 2010, Jones and his team of researchers published a paper describing a virtual tool to predict infertile women's chances of taking home a healthy baby, to an accuracy of 80%. Whereas previously researchers could only provide chances of pregnancy, this take-home baby calculator presents results in terms of a healthy baby who survives 27 days of life. By creating this software, Jones essentially created a novel business model, namely the translation of esoteric population-based data into meaningful recommendations to individual, data-savvy beneficiaries.
Jones was one of the early researchers to link reproductive biology to economics, arriving in 1999 at something called health economics which had been in development for nearly twenty years but which as a field of natural science, remains in its infancy. He made headlines in investor news with the launch of his online take-home baby calculator called For My Odds.
Jones was in the news [7] following his efforts to promote awareness of medical tourism, [8] a trend whereby individuals from developed countries seek superior or bargain medical treatments outside of their home country, and in locations that are either more affordable or more equipped with specialised care.
Jones has remained non-political but rather diplomatic, viewing global harmony as one of the most important challenges of the next century. While he was born in Washington D.C., he has spent half of his life overseas. This has led him to bring to the U.S. certain aspects of health economics that have been shown to work in international settings, and advocate for a renewed foreign policy towards global prosperity; that is, improving the health and wellbeing of people and families around the globe so that they can thrive with dignity and economic opportunities. In Paris, he was asked to be co-Founder of the UNESCO sponsored World Academy for New Thinking, an initiative founded in Malta by Edward DeBono. His banking forum established a new form of academic-industry-government collaboration, leading inter alia to what is now called CapitOx, Oxford's fast-growing finance and actuarial society.
Dr. Jones leads venture investments for the University of Vermont Health Network, is co-founder of a syndicate of 26 hospital systems each with venture funds, and is adjunct associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, one of the oldest schools of pharmacy in the United States. He is an elected voting member of the New England Comparative Effectiveness Public Advisory Council (CEPAC), and active in the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) and the World Financial Forum (WFF). From 2012-2017 Dr. Jones held a faculty appointment in the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine where he taught health economics and business.
Jones and Victoria Brassart reside in Vermont with their daughters, Johanna, Lys, and Ella-Maria.
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation where an egg is combined with sperm in vitro. The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman's ovulatory process, removing an ovum or ova from their ovaries and letting a man's sperm fertilise them in a culture medium in a laboratory. After the fertilised egg (zygote) undergoes embryo culture for 2–6 days, it is transferred by catheter into the uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.
A multiple birth is the culmination of one multiple pregnancy, wherein the mother gives birth to two or more babies. A term most applicable to vertebrate species, multiple births occur in most kinds of mammals, with varying frequencies. Such births are often named according to the number of offspring, as in twins and triplets. In non-humans, the whole group may also be referred to as a litter, and multiple births may be more common than single births. Multiple births in humans are the exception and can be exceptionally rare in the largest mammals.
Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology (ART), contraception and others. It is also termed Assisted Reproductive Technology, where it entails an array of appliances and procedures that enable the realization of safe, improved and healthier reproduction. While this is not true of all people, for an array of married couples, the ability to have children is vital. But through the technology, infertile couples have been provided with options that would allow them to conceive children.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom. It is a statutory body that regulates and inspects all clinics in the United Kingdom providing in vitro fertilisation (IVF), artificial insemination and the storage of human eggs, sperm or embryos. It also regulates human embryo research.
Assisted reproductive technology (ART) includes medical procedures used primarily to address infertility. This subject involves procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), cryopreservation of gametes or embryos, and/or the use of fertility medication. When used to address infertility, ART may also be referred to as fertility treatment. ART mainly belongs to the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. Some forms of ART may be used with regard to fertile couples for genetic purpose. ART may also be used in surrogacy arrangements, although not all surrogacy arrangements involve ART. The existence of sterility will not always require ART to be the first option to consider, as there are occasions when its cause is a mild disorder that can be solved with more conventional treatments or with behaviors based on promoting health and reproductive habits.
Edwin Carlyle "Carl" Wood,, FRANZCOG was a prominent Australian gynaecologist, best known for his pioneering work developing and commercialising the technique of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). He gained considerable international and national attention for his wide-ranging contributions in the field of women's health over a period of almost 50 years, although not all of it was positive given the controversial nature of many of his endeavours.
Sir Robert Geoffrey Edwards was a British physiologist and pioneer in reproductive medicine, and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in particular. Along with obstetrician and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy, Edwards successfully pioneered conception through IVF, which led to the birth of Louise Brown on 25 July 1978. They founded the first IVF programme for infertile patients and trained other scientists in their techniques. Edwards was the founding editor-in-chief of Human Reproduction in 1986. In 2010, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the development of in vitro fertilization".
Reproductive medicine is a branch of medicine concerning the male and female reproductive systems. It encompasses a variety of reproductive conditions, their prevention and assessment, as well as their subsequent treatment and prognosis.
Peter Robert Brinsden MBBS, MRCS, LRCP, FRCOG is known for the treatment of infertility in couples. From 1989 to 2006 he was the medical director of Bourn Hall Clinic in the UK, a leading centre for the treatment of fertility problems, and where about 6,000 babies have been conceived using IVF and other assisted conception treatments.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It created the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority which is in charge of human embryo research, along with monitoring and licensing fertility clinics in the United Kingdom.
Oocyte cryopreservation is a procedure to preserve a woman's eggs (oocytes). This technique has been used to postpone pregnancy. When pregnancy is desired, the eggs can be thawed, fertilized, and transferred to the uterus as embryos. Several studies have shown that most infertility problems are due to germ cell deterioration related to aging. The procedure's success rate varies depending on the age of the woman,, as well as depending on health and genetic indicators. In 1986, the first human birth of oocyte oocyte cryopreservation was reported.
Fertility tourism is the practice of traveling to another country or jurisdiction for fertility treatment, and may be regarded as a form of medical tourism. A person who can become pregnant is considered to have fertility issues if they are unable to have a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of unprotected intercourse. Infertility, or the inability to get pregnant, affects about 8-12% of couples looking to conceive or 186 million people globally. In some places, rates of infertility surpass the global average and can go up to 30% depending on the country. Areas with lack of resources, such as assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), tend to correlate with the highest rates of infertility.
Religious response to assisted reproductive technology deals with the new challenges for traditional social and religious communities raised by modern assisted reproductive technology. Because many religious communities have strong opinions and religious legislation regarding marriage, sex and reproduction, modern fertility technology has forced religions to respond.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to obstetrics:
Natural Cycle In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is an assisted reproductive technique designed to closely mimic a woman's natural menstrual cycle. In traditional IVF, a woman's ovaries are stimulated with fertility medications to produce multiple eggs, which are then retrieved and fertilized outside the body. A natural cycle IVF, on the other hand, works with the woman's natural hormonal fluctuations and ovulation cycle.
Partner-assisted reproduction, reception of oocytes from partner (ROPA), reciprocal IVF,shared motherhood, partner IVF or co-IVF is a method of family building that is used by couples who both possess female reproductive organs. The method uses in vitro fertilization (IVF), a method that means eggs are removed from the ovaries, fertilized in a laboratory, and then one or more of the resulting embryos are placed in the uterus to hopefully create a pregnancy. Reciprocal IVF differs from standard IVF in that two partners are involved: the eggs are taken from one partner, and the other partner carries the pregnancy. In this way, the process is mechanically identical to IVF with egg donation. Reciprocal IVF offers the highest chance for pregnancy and a lower chance of a multiple births.
The history of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) goes back more than half a century. In 1959 the first birth in a nonhuman mammal resulting from IVF occurred, and in 1978 the world's first baby conceived by IVF was born. As medicine advanced, IVF was transformed from natural research to a stimulated clinical treatment. There have been many refinements in the IVF process, and today millions of births have occurred with the help of IVF all over the world.
Simon Fishel is an English physiologist, biochemist and pioneering in vitro fertilisation (IVF) specialist.
John Dennis Biggers was a British and American reproductive biologist and reproductive physiologist who helped pioneer in vitro fertilisation. He played a founding role in the scientific study of reproductive physiology, won many scientific awards for developing technology which would become central to human IVF, and engaged in public outreach regarding the ethics of artificial fertilisation.
Norbert Gleicher is an American obstetrician-gynecologist active in obstetrical practice, in vitro fertilization, reproductive endocrinology, and reproductive immunology. He is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FACOG) and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and currently serves as president, medical director and chief scientist of the Center for Human Reproduction (CHR) in New York City, a clinical fertility center that he founded in 1981. Simultaneously, he is President of the Foundation for Reproductive Medicine, a not-for-profit research foundation. Gleicher maintains additional academic appointments at Rockefeller University, and Medical University of Vienna.
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