A new tale about IVF children

Oh, how I "love" our journalists! Not all of them, of course, but only those who are irresponsible about their work and don’t bother to check the information they are writing about. The other day I came across an article with a terrible title "Artificial insemination is considered to be a risk factor."

The author argues that women who spend more than one year to conceive a child through IVF, risk of having a child with neurological problems. "This explains the fact that children conceived through in vitro fertilization procedure are generally more susceptible to multiple diseases associated with the development of the brain and nervous system. It’s noteworthy that the use of in vitro fertilization procedure, and not the age of the parents is crucial "- happily reports our journalist, referring to the Dutch scientists from the University of Groningen.

Frankly, I was preparing to criticize the researchers from the Netherlands, but as there was no data about the number of test persons, nor about their age in the article, I decided to check the information and referred to the original source. As it turned out, it wasn’t for nothing.

In a scientific article published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, it was written in black and white that the risk of neurological problems in children conceived through IVF has nothing to do with the very method of infertility treatment. The scientists have linked the development of small deviations not with the method of conception, but with health problems of the mothers that have been preventing conception for a certain period of time, including their age. And the moral of the story is that the authors appeal to the government to pay special attention to the increasing age of first-time mothers, and do everything possible to encourage women to give birth earlier, because it affects the health of the nation.