Notes of the Quarter

Scientists plan to exhume the body of a young woman who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic in London in an attempt to examine the virus that claimed 50 m lives. She was buried in Twickenham in a lead coffin within a brick vault, conditions that scientists believe will have preserved the body so well that they will be able to extract samples of the virus.

According to a survey carried out by The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority success rates amongst fertility clinics vary from 10% to 40%. The average cost of a single course of IVF fertility treatment is £3,000.

Newly opened in London under the banner “This is a Man Free Zone” Britain’s first fertility clinic for lesbian couples and single women is applying for a licence to operate to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

A campaign group has called on the Government to set targets for stabilising the population and then allowing it to fall to 30 million, the level it was 100 years ago. The Optimum Population Trust insists that quality of life would be far better with fewer people, and that the Government should not try to boost the population by encouraging parenthood or immigration.

A London fertility specialist has created 18 “ice” babies from unfertilised eggs that had been in prolonged deep frozen storage. The process allows a woman to have high quality eggs removed in early adulthood and stored, enabling her to pursue a career and have time to select a suitable father to fertilise the eggs.