And Sarah, i used to run an infertility website, I know hundreds of people who have had IVF babies, how is this diluting the gene pool? Some of these women merely have unexplained infertility, they ovulate, have a working uterus but say, they have a damaged fallopian tube that prevents the embryo from implanting. Or say, their husband has a low sperm count and its much easier to concentrate the sperm and actually inject one good sperm into the egg. This is called ICSI (or pronounced ixie) intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection. And then this is allowed to fertilize for a few days and transferred to her uterus. There is nothing genetically wrong with either one of these people as far as not being able to get pregnant.
When a healthy egg or healthy sperm are put together without major genetic flaw, regardless if its done in a petri dish, you are producing the same quality of human being you would be naturally. In fact, it's probably a higher quality of embryo because the eggs are graded in a lab and the not so good ones are tossed out and not fertilized at all.
Totally off topic... but...
Depending on how that fallopian tube was damaged... you have a point, if it was not by birth but say, trauma, then indeed it could be a perfectly healthy baby.
However, the low sperm count is exactly my point... It could be because of various reasons, a too high bodytemperature that kills off sperm cells or just a low production count or... Thing is, this is genetically coded for. And allowing someone to reproduce who, in nature, wouldn't have been able to get offspring, is messing with natural selection.
I'm not saying this is a black/white thing... someone with a low sperm count might just have had a lower chance of getting a child, and might have gotten lucky and naturally procreate. But then this kid has a big chance of being less fertile too, and his/her chance of reproducing might be much lower because of this. This *is* "weakening" the gene pool. (Although that's probably not correctly said, you get the gist of what I mean?)
My cousin works in an infertility clinic, and we've had many discussions about this. But still I am convinced that improving the chance of an egg to be fertilized by concentrating semen near it, or even injecting it in, is essentially on a very basic level wrong.
It's horrible, terrible for a couple not to be able to have kids, and when a solution like that comes along and works and makes them deliriously happy, of course I understand why people would do it.
It concerns me however that no one looks past that, and thinks about the fact that the child, although perfectly healthy, could possibly (a higher risk of) have problems with fertility itsself later on.