Solving fertility problems – from burying semen to the future of IVF
Posted on 18 June 2012
Dr Prasad will present a compelling account of the history of medicine’s attempts to solve infertility. She will discuss the future of IVF and the next generation of technologies which promise to rewrite family in profound and provocative ways.
The lecture will take the audience on a tour of artificial reproduction today, including the boom in the surrogate mother business in India, and the work underway in the cutting-edge labs that are creating ‘sex-less reproduction’, from the race to manufacture effective sperm to the invention of an artificial womb (already being used to nurture sharks to birth). Dr Prasad will say that as our understanding of sex and reproduction has changed, so too have the roles of women and men, the definition of a parent, and the balance of work and family.
Dr Prasad is a former academic scientist with a background in cancer genetics research. After leaving laboratory research, she worked as a television researcher, a marketer in the pharmaceutical industry and defended science with the charity Sense about Science. She is now a freelance science journalist, author and broadcaster.
Aarathi Prasad will appear at the York Festival of Ideas on 21 June at 6.30pm at the National Science Learning Centre. Free tickets can be downloaded on www.yorkfestivalofideas.com/tickets.
Notes to editors:
- Further details are on yorkfestivalofideas.com/talks/2012/aarathi-prasad/
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