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Monday 28 September 2020

Big Egg

The golden egg

Young women are being offered the chance to delay the menopause. The question is: does it work, and does anyone even want it?

By Claudia Williams

The golden egg podcast

The fertility industry has changed the way we think about the very basics of human life: how we are made, how we are born, and who we are born to. It’s transformed the lives of millions of people around the world.

And it’s grown into a highly-lucrative world with an overflowing market of options. Fertility is no longer just about people who want to have a baby. From egg freezing to fertility MOTs, young women in particular are being pulled into the industry earlier and earlier. And for some – it’s a lifeline. But this is a highly emotional and anxiety-ridden subject, and how these products are marketed and who they are marketed to matters.

At the forefront of the industry is a clinic called ProFaM, that offers women the chance to rewrite the rules of reproductive biology – to delay the menopause and preserve their fertility. And in this story we ask: how did we end up in a place where the founder of the UK’s most successful fertility clinic can sell healthy young women an expensive surgical procedure, that some experts claim is still experimental?

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