Test-tube babies: A simpler, cheaper technique?

Scientists say test tube-babies could be made for 200 euros with lab the size of a shoebox.

 Since the first test-tube baby was born more than three decades ago, in vitro fertilization has evolved into a highly sophisticated lab procedure. Now, scientists are going back to basics and testing a simpler and cheaper method.

In the West, many would-be parents spend thousands of dollars for IVF, which involves pricey incubators and extensive screening. But European and American scientists say a simplified version of the entire procedure aimed at developing countries could be done for about 200 euros ($265) with generic fertility drugs and basic lab equipment that would fit inside a shoebox.

“IVF is made to sound complicated but the fact is that the early embryo is not very demanding,” said Jonathan Van Blerkom, a fertility expert at the University of Colorado.

A human embryo doesn’t need much beyond some basic solutions, a steady pH level and constant temperature, he said.

The simpler approach calls for women to take cheaper fertility tablets to stimulate their ovaries to release more than one egg per month. In conventional IVF, expensive, potent drugs that are injected can produce more than 20 eggs.

Van Blerkom developed the simplified technique after European colleagues asked him how IVF could be done in developing countries.

“My first reaction was, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’” he said.

But with two test tubes and special solutions, “it’s possible to generate the exact same conditions, or very similar, to what people are generating in a $60,000 incubator.”