For couples who can't conceive, scientific breakthroughs offer hope. But they also raise ethical obstacles and headlines such as "Three-parent baby", "The end of men?" and "Your real mother was an aborted foetus".
Sometimes the media's portrayal of reproductive medicine spins the science to the furthest possible outcome. But what's the reality of work going on in our labs? How soon will it reach fertility clinics and will it really mean the end of society as we know it?
Womb transplants
Until recently, the majority of science behind reproductive medicine involved work on eggs and sperm (known collectively as gametes). If you were without a womb or it didn't work, your only real choice was adoption or surrogacy. But now, womb transplants are on the agenda.
Several research groups have had success with transplants in sheep, rabbits and pigs but haven't achieved a subsequent pregnancy. The first attempt in a human was reported in 2002, when doctors in Saudi Arabia transplanted the womb of a healthy 46-year-old woman into a 26-year-old. The graft survived two menstrual cycles, but had to be removed after a blood clot developed.
Professor Richard Smith from Hammersmith Hospital, London, thinks his team may have found the answer by transplanting wombs from organ donors, in the same way as hearts and livers. His team plans to transfer the larger blood vessels too, which a living donor couldn't do without. He believes this will give the organ a better chance of survival