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The Intelligence from The Economist

The Weekend Intelligence: The hope and the heartbreak of IVF

The Intelligence from The Economist

The Economist

News, Global News, Daily News

4.53.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In our second episode of The Weekend Intelligence, The Economist correspondents Catherine Brahic and Sacha Nauta tell a different story about fertility treatment. A story about the pain, the hope and the despair that is paid for a life to be created. And a personal story about two women, over five years, whose lives followed parallel tracks in their quest for a baby.



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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the weekend intelligence. You're listening to a free episode.

0:05.6

To listen every week you'll need to be a subscriber. For a free trial of Economist

0:10.5

Podcasts plus click on the link in the show notes or just search Economist

0:14.4

Podcasts in your very favorite search engine.

0:20.8

The Economist.

0:32.0

Chances are, you know at least one person who has a story of IVF, friends or family whose children wouldn't exist if it weren't

0:37.8

for this transformative technology.

0:41.8

I know I do and it feels miraculous right only 45 years ago every human being in a

0:50.6

history had been conceived inside a woman's body.

0:54.0

And yet today, there are more than 10 million people on the planet who are conceived in a Petri dish instead.

1:04.0

For many parents, for people in same-sex relationships or in no relationship at all,

1:09.0

when biology has placed them at a dead end,

1:12.0

in vitro fertilization has paved a path to parenthood.

1:17.6

For many women, whose personal circumstances, whatever they may be, mean they're trying for children later in life.

1:24.0

IVF can help stretch time a bit, expanding the window of what's possible.

1:30.0

In short, it's made dreams come true.

1:37.0

Those are really important stories to tell, but they tell one story.

1:46.0

And that's because behind the miracles, the more than 10 million and counting,

1:48.0

the IVF baby born every 45 seconds,

1:52.0

there is another reality, a reality that rarely gets spoken about.

1:58.1

I've done five years of IVF treatments and eight cycles.

2:06.3

You hear all of these examples of miracles happening all the time.

...

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