Fr Richard Nazzareno Farrugia comments (March 7) on the recent workshop on infertility organised by the Pontifical Academy for Life.

The main causes for the increasing problem of infertility, known for several years now, include the increasing age of women when they plan to start a family (and when their fertility is decreasing), increasing promiscuity amoung the young leading to sexually trasmitted infections and possibly blocked fertility uterine tubes and increasing eating disorders resulting in anorexic or obesity problems, both of which interfere with fertility.

Fr Farrugia’s piece observed that infertility clinics often present in vitro fertilisation (IVF) as the only solution.

This scenario pervades modern medicine and not just gynaecology.

Although American evidence-based claims for reversal of serious heart disease by dietary and lifestyle changes exist (which claim over 90 per cent of heart operations would be unnecessary), specialist doctors will only offer the narrow field of their expertise as the solution.

Having said that, insinuating that IVF is undesirable or wrong because it is “unnatural”, should be rebutted.

Practically all modern medicine is “unnatural” by such a definition – cutting the body open with knives and scissors to remove an inflamed appendix, or a cancer, is all “unnatural”. “Natural” would be to do nothing until “natural” death concludes the problem.