SUCCESS rates for IVF could be more than doubled by a new method for testing the viability of human embryos before they are transferred to the womb.
At present, clinics check the development of embryos under a microscope to predict which are most likely to implant. They may also take a cell from the embryo and analyse its genes – a technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) – although this is generally used to test for a specific genetic disease. “You poke an embryo, remove one of the cells, and at best can only look for a few genes,” says…
