Studies Of Infertility

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31145, 23 August 1966, Page 3

Studies Of Infertility

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, August 22. The study of human infertility will always retain an important place in medicine, in spite of increasing emphasis on birth control, according to a visiting Swedish professor, Dr. R. Eliasson. Dr. Eliasson directs the Swedish Medical Research Council programme for the

investigation of human infertility. With two other professors, Dr. A. Gronwall and Dr. , G. Artusson, he is on a brief

lecture tour of New Zealand. The three men today addressed Auckland doctors on clinical subjects related to haematology. Dr. Eliasson said research into the causes of infertility played an indirect role in reducing the world’s birth rate. "If we can find out why some people are naturally infertile, then we may discover how to make others infertile as well,” he said. “The study of infertility is only another

way of approaching the problem of contraception.” The psychological problems which beset barren couples also called for intensive re-

search into the sources of infertility. “Ten per cent of ail married couples are infertile. We cannot just tell these people that there are too many children in the world anyway,” he said. Dr. Eliasson said knowledge about infertility was scant, but was expanding rapidly. Because of moral and religious pressures, research into the subject was at least 25 years behind other fields of medical inquiry.