Women older than 100 to give birth in the nearest future

Women aged 100 will be able to give birth within three decades as infertility is eradicated, scientists have predicted.

Photo: Women older than 100 to give birth in the nearest future

Women older than 100 to give birth in the nearest future

They foresee a world where every female of any age - from childhood upwards - could successfully conceive.

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Employing techniques still to be developed, scientists believe they could create sperm and eggs from skin cells and combine them to form embryos.

Parents would then be able to choose a so-called "designer" baby, selecting based on characteristics such as hair colour and height to intelligence and disease-free genes.

The forecasts, reported in Nature, were made by leading scientists who were asked to anticipate advances in reproduction by 2038 to mark the 30th birthday of Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby.

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Davor Solter, of the Institute of Biology in Singapore, said: "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."

Other steps forward that are envisaged are gestation taking place in an artificial womb, low-cost IVF treatment being made available at 100 dollars a cycle and - more controversially - the creation of embryos for experiments.

Mr Solter added: "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."

Source: The Telegraph