Lab-made eggs will help people have children when they choose to

THE Italian government recently got into trouble over a campaign aimed at reversing the country’s falling birth rate. Adverts saying “Beauty has no age limit. Fertility has” were slammed for being insensitive to young people struggling financially, and insulting to infertile couples.

Tin ear or not, the campaign highlighted some serious points. Fertility is falling; the population is declining and ageing. That may sound good to those who see overpopulation as the root of all ills, but a crash is not a desirable way to solve the problem. And the volume of misery that infertility causes is underappreciated. It often comes about because people are trying for children later in life, relying on medicine to help.

That is one reason to celebrate the latest advances in fertility treatment. Last month, we broke the story of the first three-parent baby born using a technique that saved him from a fatal disease. The same method is helping infertile women conceive.

Now, scientists have worked out a way to create fertile mouse eggs from adult skin cells (see “Eggs made from skin cells in lab could herald end of infertility“). The feat will almost certainly be replicated in humans. For those who want children, there might not be a perfect time to start a family, but advances like this will help people choose their time.

This article appeared in print under the headline “A time like the present”