The first “IVF baby”, Louise Brown, will be 40 next year. A quarter of a million children have now been born as a result of in vitro fertilisation in Britain. Every baby is precious, and the parents of these children have endured arduous treatment and sometimes great financial sacrifice in order to have a family.

The situation is more complex than it first appears, however. Only a quarter of IVF treatments result in a baby. The odds are better than when IVF was introduced (when it was 15 per cent), but it still means that the vast majority of people who embark on this treatment are being offered false hope that they will be able to have their longed-for child. The irony is that IVF does not diagnose or treat the causes of infertility; it attempts to bypass them. Instead of trying to enable natural processes to work, IVF steamrollers them. Ovulation is first suppressed, then hyperstimulated.