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The newest IVF technology uses a fancy new technique which marries IVF and genetics. This is called PGD ( preimplantation genetic diagnosis) with CGH ( comparative genomic hybridisation) and there are lots of press releases and articles touting this as the newest breakthrough !

Doctors , like all big boys, love to play with new toys - and the newer the better ! This is especially true when they have expensive new technological tools, which no other competitor has. Doctors can be very competitive - and are always trying to be one-up on each other. An easy way of being different is to use the newest technology - but the trouble is that never is not always better ( though newer is always more expensive !)

Because these new tools are so expensive , doctors need to use them extensively, to justify the expense - after all, they need to show the bean counters who pay their salaries and bonuses that the new tool is cost effective !

The key question thoughtful patients need to be asking is - Is it really better ? Or is it a solution looking for a problem ?

I think the truth is we really don't know right now ! It's very likely to be useful for some patients - but to expect it to be useful for everyone across the board is hoping for too much ! While it may seem logical to use PGD, unfortunately, biological systems are not always logical ! What seems to make sense in theory often does not

As a doctor in clinical practise , whose major focus is simply to get as many of my patients pregnant as quickly as possible, I am quite conservative and prefer to wait and watch.

I follow Alexander Pope's dictum,
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Only time will tell how useful PGD-CGH is - but the enormous commercial pressures under which IVF clinics operate - and the constant demand by patients that their doctor use the newest and the latest breakthrough technology they read about in the newspaper means that most IVF clinic will likely end up overusing it !