They included all the big names of IVF as well as many who nurse big-name dreams, and they were intent on taking stock of where they are and where they're going. So intent, in fact, that news from the outside world seemed not to penetrate—let me succumb to an irresistible metaphor—the concrete zona pellucida of the convention center's appropriately round main hail.
Not even relevant news, apparently. For, unlike poor pitiful Baby M, conceived through the comparatively hoary technology of artificial insemination, the South African Three are IVF products. The laboratory-generated embryos resulted from bringing together the mother's eggs with her spouse's sperm. They were transferred into a surrogate mother who was also the mother's mother, if you follow—proving once again that truth really is stranger than the National Enquirer.
The South African stunt is the sort that gives IVF a bad name. It proclaims that some people who do ...
