Women may soon give birth at 100 thanks to IVF advances
17 Jul 2008, 1754 Hrs

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London, July 17 (ANI): Scientists predict that advances in test-tube fertilisation procedures may soon make it possible for women to give birth even at the age of 100.

A research team, led by Davor Solter of the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore, believes that there will be an end to infertility in 30 years' time, with every woman able to have a baby.

Using sophisticated techniques not yet available, they think sperm and eggs will be created from skin cells, and combined to make embryos.

The claims were made by leading scientists asked to predict advances in reproduction by 2038.

"It means every person regardless of age will be able to have children. Newborn children could have children and 100-year-olds could have children. It could easily happen in the next 30 years," the Mirror quoted Solter, as saying.

The researchers say that future techniques would allow scientists to create thousands of embryos to experiment on.

Solter said: "I have no idea what kind of moral value or rights we'd give to those embryos. It could be terrible to start, and then become a fact of life. Maybe 30 years from now we'll read someone made 20,000 embryos and studied their development and we'll decide it's OK."

The predictions have been published in Nature. (ANI)