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?