A woman old enough to be a great-grandmother has given birth to a baby girl after conceiving through IVF and become the world's oldest mother. Rajo Devi, from the Haryan province of India, is apparently not worried about what will happen to the child when she and her 72-year-old husband die - almost certainly before the child reaches adulthood. They have an extended family who will look after her.
This may be the case, but there is no getting round the fact that two elderly people have deliberately created and brought into the world a child neither of them will be able to love and support into adult life.
The newspaper report is entirely positive, with the doctor who performed the ICSI procedure, a Dr Anurag Bishnoi, talking excitedly about how IVF has revolutionised the way we see fertility. It certainly has. It has turned children into goods to be created or discarded and allowed adults to indulge their selfish and unethical desires. We have nothing to be proud of.
