Michelle answers:

Yes, you can get pregnant. Yes, you are more likely to have a tubal pregnancy. IVF was made for folks like you. Don’t put it off too long – you are more likely to be successful the younger you are.

Michelle answers:

Interesting question that I’m sure some science fiction novel at some point has tried to deal with. Reality is, who knows? Will ethical bombardment counter the scientific advancements in genetic modification? Or will science and progress come out as the winner? It seems as though science is continually pushing and making ground on ethical boundaries but I don’t know if there will be a critical point where people will just refuse to let it go any further. There will probably always be a split on either side.. Well at least as long as fundamentalist religious folk are around. In my opinion it seems rather stupid that we shouldn’t be aloud to optimise our own genetics, seeing as how we breed dogs and livestock with essentially the same idea in mind – to optimise the new born. I don’t understand why ethical groups say we must leave a small percentage of the genome structure to luck. I suppose they believe that this ‘luck-of-the-draw’ factor is the will of a higher being or something similar.

However it is my belief that mother nature can be a cruel woman and it if a human possesses the knowledge to prevent a vastly debilitating illness such as cerebral palsy, isn’t it our moral obligation to do so? Of course our definition of a ‘disability’ may begin to mutate with time to the point where we prevent ‘ugly’ people from being born. That’s where it gets a bit funny for me. I think modifications should be medically-orientated because this path sort of makes me think as though we would end up moving towards a planet of essentially cloned and perfect men and women (like you have said). Although on the other hand, some could argue that the level-of-attractiveness of a person can lead to mental illnesses such as depression (unattractive people can have a hard time in school etc) so does that mean it is also cruel to not let the more ‘superficial’ modifications take place? I don’t know. It really is a tough subject.

Sorry I’ve gone off on a tangent a bit, its very interesting. Back to the question. Will it happen? Mmm in short No, I don’t think so. Not for a long time at least or not on a large scale anyway. Human-cloning faces some pretty large hurdles and subjectivity will always play a part in what the ‘desirable’ traits of a human will be so I don’t think we will ever reach the point where we have one model for man and one model for woman and they pop out of factories. Also there’s the human element where pregnancy and emotions and all that stuff is involved.

I like these sort of science fiction ideas though, thanks for the question.

Jim.

Also: I have no doubt in my mind that all of the things you mentioned will become *feasible* in the future, in fact I don’t think thre are limits (or at least they are very far away from our current position) to human capabilities in this sort of area. These things seem to be meerely a question of time. Here I’m mainly talking about wehther they will become *applicable* given the ethical climate.

Michelle answers:

I’m not really sure what you are asking but IVF is not something that you would want to do voluntarily. I suggest you do a lot of research as it involves the women giving herself daily (sometimes more) injections of hormones in the stomach and then having to go under general anesthetic to have an operation to collect the mature eggs and then another procedure to have the embryos inserted. I have a friend who is 7.5 months pregnant after going through it twice (first ended in miscarriage at 12 weeks) and it was her husband who had the fertility issue not her. Not only that, it is also very expensive. If you are thinking of it as an easy alternative to get pregnant fast – think again!

Not sure if this helped but I only found out how much was involved with the whole process recently and it totally shocked me to see what the women had to go throught when more often than not the issue was with the man.

Anyway – goodluck and I hope this helped.

Michelle answers:

A home pregnacy test is a home pregnancy test. There is not a special test just for those who use IVF. Your test will work just fine.

Good luck!