Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt recently announced that from 1 November 2021, Australians going through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) will be able to claim a Medicare rebate for genetic testing to screen embryos for severe genetic conditions prior to implantation.

News that IVF doctors have enabled a seventy year old woman in India to give birth to a baby will undoubtedly provide countless women worldwide with false hope about their own chances of using reproductive technology to become pregnant and give birth. This comes amidst existing critique of the fertility industry regarding its lack of transparency about success rates of treatment.

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has grown significantly since the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first ‘test-tube baby’ in 1978, with more than 8 million babies estimated to have been born worldwide as a result of IVF and other advanced fertility treatments.

After more than a year of living through the Covid-19 outbreak, Australians have reluctantly become accustomed to some of the restrictions on their liberty imposed upon them in a collective effort to curb the outbreak of the virus and minimise illness and loss of life.

New research has found that most women undergoing IVF treatment in Australia are paying for costly add-on treatments despite “rather weak” evidence of their effectiveness and safety.

A perhaps unforeseen outcome of the COVID pandemic has been a dramatic increase in the number of women freezing their eggs. In Queensland, in the period from 2019 to 2020, Monash IVF Brisbane reported a 250% increase in the number of women freezing their eggs, and the Queensland Fertility Group experienced a 32 per cent increase between 2019 to 2021.

One in six Australian couples will have difficulties conceiving a child, with age being the biggest factor affecting fertility. Women under 30 have about a 20% chance of getting pregnant each month, falling to about 5% at age 40.