Yulia Yu. Toropkova, obstetrician-gynecologist of the Center for Fetal Medicine of the Medica group of companies, chief physician of the Counseling Centre at the Saint Petersburg Orthodox Doctors Society. (St. Petersburg)
Infertile marriage and childlessness are the problems of modern society. Hence there is the demand for assisted reproductive technologies (ART), a wide range of which is offered by modern medicine. This includes in vitro fertilization (IVF). For the first time IVF was used in 1978 in the English city of Cambridge, the first child from the test tube was a girl Louise Brown. Since 1978, more than 5 million children in the world were born in vitro fertilization. In 1986, IVF was first tried in our country.
There is an important question about the moral and ethical, legal and spiritual boundaries of the use of ART and IVF. Such issues as: the problem of self-identity of the child, the involvement of up to 5 people in the process of creating a new life, the commercialization of donating, the creation and destruction of “extra” embryos, germ cell donation.