In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process of fertilisation in which an egg is combined with sperm in vitro. The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman's ovulatory process, then removing an ovum or ova from her ovaries and enabling a man's sperm to fertilise them in a culture medium in a laboratory. After a 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.
Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate is the average number of children born during an individual's lifetime. In medicine, fertility refers to the ability to have children, and infertility refers to difficulty in reproducing naturally. In general, infertility or subfertility in humans is defined as not being able to conceive a child after one year of unprotected sex. The antithesis of fertility is infertility, while the antithesis of fecundity is sterility.
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.
Matthew William Goode is a British actor. Goode made his screen debut in 2002 with ABC's television film Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.
Male pregnancy is the incubation of one or more embryos or fetuses by organisms of the male sex in some species. Most species that reproduce by sexual reproduction are heterogamous—females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). In nearly all animal species, offspring are carried by the female until birth, but in fish of the family Syngnathidae, males perform that function.
Inconceivable is an American medical drama television series revolving around a fertility clinic, which was broadcast on NBC. The program premiered on September 23, 2005, and ended after seven episodes on November 4, 2005. The series was created by Oliver Goldstick and Marco Pennette. Goldstick and Pennette also served as executive producers as did Brian Robbins and Mike Tollin. The show was a Touchstone Television and Tollin/Robbins production, one of the few shows produced by the former not to air on ABC in recent years. After only two episodes of the series aired, it was pulled from the air in early October due to low ratings, and was cancelled by NBC just a few days later.
Anna Maxwell Martin, sometimes credited as Anna Maxwell-Martin, is a British actress. She won two British Academy Television Awards, for her portrayals of Esther Summerson in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House (2005) and N in the Channel 4 adaptation of Poppy Shakespeare (2008). She is also known for her roles as DCS Patricia Carmichael in BBC One crime drama Line of Duty (2019–2021) and Kelly Major in Code 404 (2020–2022). From 2016-2022, Martin starred in the BBC comedy Motherland, for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance.
Fertility clinics are medical clinics that assist couples, and sometimes individuals, who want to become parents but for medical reasons have been unable to achieve this goal via the natural course. Clinics apply a number of diagnosis tests and sometimes very advanced medical treatments to achieve conceptions and pregnancies.
Natasha Emma Little is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Edith Thompson in the film Another Life, Lady Caroline Langbourne in the BBC miniseries The Night Manager, and Christina Moxam in the BBC miniseries Thirteen. Other credits include Wolf Hall (2015), the Black Mirror episode "Shut Up and Dance" (2016), Absentia (2018-2019), and War of the Worlds (2019–2021).
Evans v. the United Kingdom was a key case at the European Court of Human Rights. The case outcome could have had a major impact on fertility law, not only within the United Kingdom but also the other Council of Europe countries.
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 Birmingham Women's Fertility Centre at Birmingham Women’s Hospital, Birmingham, England, formerly named the "Assisted Conception Unit", is one of the UK's leading medical centres for infertility treatment and care. It is the longest established fertility clinic in the Midlands, marking thirty years operations in the year 2010. The clinic is based in an NHS hospital and provides integrated care to both NHS and private patients; the staff is internationally recognised for their work in treating with infertility. The clinic runs active programmes of egg-sharing, sperm donation and egg-donation.
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.
Aidan Turner is an Irish actor. He began his career in the RTÉ medical drama The Clinic (2008–2009) and the BBC series Desperate Romantics (2009). He later gained attention for co-starring as one of the main leads in the popular BBC Three series Being Human (2009–2011), and for playing the dwarf Kíli in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), before starring as the eponymous character in the BBC adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark (2015–2019).
Sperm donation is the provision by a man of his sperm with the intention that it be used in the artificial insemination or other "fertility treatment" of one or more women who are not his sexual partners in order that they may become pregnant by him. Where pregnancies go to full term, the sperm donor will be the biological father of every baby born from his donations. The man is known as a sperm donor and the sperm he provides is known as "donor sperm" because the intention is that the man will give up all legal rights to any child produced from his sperm, and will not be the legal father. Sperm donation may also be known as "semen donation".
"Tuesday's Child" is the 38th episode of the seventh series of the British medical drama television series Holby City. The episode was written by Andrew Holden and directed by Simon Meyers, and premiered on BBC One on 5 July 2005. In "Tuesday's Child", registrar Diane Lloyd travels to Ghana in an attempt to persuade consultant Ric Griffin to return to Holby and save Holby City Hospital's general surgery ward. Ric deals with family issues, whilst trying to secure funding for his brother's clinic.
Forced fatherhood or imposed paternity, occurs when a man becomes a father against his will or without his consent. It can include deception by a partner about her ability to get pregnant or use of contraceptives, birth control sabotage, paternity fraud and sexual assaults of males that result in pregnancy.
"Bad Luck" is the 14th episode of season 4 of the supernatural drama television series Grimm and the 80th episode overall, which premiered on March 20, 2015, on the cable network NBC. The episode was written by Thomas Ian Griffith and was directed by Terrence O'Hara.
Jean Marian Purdy was a British nurse, embryologist and pioneer of fertility treatment. She was responsible with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe for developing in vitro fertilisation. Louise Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born on 25 July 1978, and Purdy was the first to see the embryonic cells dividing.
Fertility fraud is the failure on the part of a fertility doctor to obtain consent from a patient before inseminating her with his own sperm. This normally occurs in the context of people using assisted reproductive technology (ART) to address fertility issues.
