LOUISE BROWN, the world's first test-tube baby, turns 30 this week. She is no longer the miracle she once seemed: more than 3 million people have now been conceived through in vitro fertilisation. Indeed, IVF has become such a common means of conception that it is hard to believe the Catholic church still opposes it.
At the time of Brown's birth, the church was undecided about the morals and ethics of IVF, but it has since banned its members from using the technology, declaring it "morally unacceptable". That is primarily because it views fertilised embryos as potential human beings, and thus sees the destruction of embryos, a common aspect of the IVF process, as equivalent to murder.
That is not the only problem: there is also a moral question over the extent to which humans should usurp the role of the divine. In 1986 Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote that IVF "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person". In other words, IVF allows us to play God.
The Catholic church's position is looking ever more absurd, especially when you consider that it stands virtually alone on this matter. The vast majority of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu groups see IVF as a useful means to an essential end: overcoming infertility. Muslim scholars issued their first proclamation, or fatwa, on IVF within two years of Brown's birth. This came from the leaders of the majority Sunni group, to which over 90 per cent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims belong. The fatwa decreed that a married couple was free to use IVF as long as there was no donation of gametes from third parties. The minority Shiite group is even more tolerant: it has allowed its members to use donated eggs or sperm since the mid-1990s, so long as all parties adhere to Islamic codes regarding parenting.
Most Catholics are similarly progressive, but this means they have to flout the dictates of their church. After a 1987 Vatican pronouncement on the immoral nature of IVF, Margaret Brooks, an Australian Catholic and the first woman to have a child born from a frozen embryo, boldly told The New York Times that no one paid any attention to such decrees. At the same time, several European Catholic hospitals announced that they would defy the church and continue to provide IVF treatment. It was, one hospital said, "an infinitely precious human service".
The pope is not in the business of bowing to popular demand, but even he must sense that the church's position is becoming ever more isolated. He could do something about it. The church has changed its views in response to scientific and technological developments before. It was the invention of the microscope and the subsequent discovery of the ovum that first persuaded Catholics to err on the side of caution and adopt their current position on the sanctity of the embryo. Why can't the Vatican take account of all we have learned in the IVF era and revise the rules again?
Making a sensible retreat over IVF would also open the way to resolving other controversies over reproductive technologies - for example, stem cell research, which the Vatican opposes. This in turn might enable other conservative religious groups to back down without losing face. Muslim scholars have already blazed a trail here too. In 2001 the Islamic Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC, convened a panel of medical, scientific and religious experts to work out how IVF and stem cell research fit in with Islamic teaching. They concluded that IVF is "a compassionate and humane scientific procedure". On stem cells they went even further, calling it "a societal obligation" to perform research on the extra embryos that are produced in IVF procedures because of the potential benefits that could accrue from it.
Next to this kind of enlightened judgment, the Catholic church looks increasingly out of touch. Moreover, failure to modernise its stance on IVF will make it harder for the church to deal with issues thrown up by even newer technologies. Scientists are learning how to manufacture sperm and egg cells from other types of cell; others are developing "alternative" wombs. In the coming decades, infertility may become nothing more than an inconvenience. If most Catholics already ignore their church's decrees on IVF, how can it hope to be a voice of guidance when the issues become even more complicated?
If most Catholics ignore the church on this, how can it hope to guide on even more complex issues?
IVF has its downsides. It is still expensive, failure rates - the proportion of fertilised eggs that fail to result in a live birth - are relatively high (twice as high as with natural pregnancies), and there are health risks for the woman whose eggs are harvested for the procedure. However, it has also turned frustration into joy for millions of parents. This is something to celebrate. IVF was born of compassion and a desire to relieve human misery. If humans are using the technology to play God, they are at least demonstrating God's good side. The pope, of all people, should recognise that.