An interesting look at the progress of in fertility treatments:

220 AD-The medical text Shang Han Lun, the oldest clinical textbook in the world is published. This book suggested acupuncture for treatment of infertility.

1237 -The Complete Book of Effective Prescriptions for Diseases of Women is published in China. This book is credited with starting the field of reproductive medicine. The book says that infertility is influenced by the water element and the earth element adding that underlying disharmonies cause infertility.

1923 - The female reproductive hormone estrogen is discovered.

1929 - The female reproductive hormone progesterone is discovered.

1932- Science fiction author Aldous Huxley pens Brave New World realistically describing IVF techniques as they are known today.

1944 - Harvard physician John Rock reports the first U.S. fertilization of human eggs in a laboratory dish.

1970 –The nation's first commercial sperm bank opens in Minnesota.

1973- Australian professors Carl Wood and John Leeton report the first IVF pregnancy, which unfortunately results in an early miscarriage.

1974 – A Massachusetts nurse founds the National Fertility Association (RESOLVE) as a non-profit organization to promote reproductive health and to ensure equal access to all family building.

1978-The first ever IVF birth occurs in Oldham, England on July 25, 1978.

1981 –The first U.S in vitro baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr is born.

1984- A 5 1/2-pound infant girl named Zoe is the world's first baby produced from a frozen embryo. Scientists at Monash University in Australia freeze the embryo for two months before it is implanted in the woman’s uterus.

1985- A Michigan woman becomes the first surrogate mother to carry and deliver a test-tube baby for another couple. The biological mother’s egg, fertilized with her husband’s sperm is implanted in a gestational surrogate because the mother could not carry the baby to term.

1989-Professors Alan Handyside and Robert Winston develop a new screening technique to test embryos for genetic disorders at Hammerside Hospital in West London. The procedure that Professor Handyside developed is now used to detect more than 350 genetic conditions, and is considered the father of modern preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

1990- Dr. Gianpiero D. Palermo pioneers intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a revolutionary procedure in which a single sperm cell is injected directly into the egg for fertilization at the university hospital in Brussels, Belgium. The procedure is major break through in the treatment of male-factor infertility.

1995- Dubbed as “Nobody’s Child,” Jaycee Buzzanca is declared to have no parents after being conceived from donor sperm and a donor egg, then transferred into the womb of a surrogate mother recruited by a Los Angeles couple.

1997- A Georgia woman gives birth to twins in what is the first frozen egg birth in the United States. Scientists had been able to produce pregnancies from frozen embryos, but eggs had proved to be too fragile to withstand freezing.

2000-The world’s first “savior” baby Adam Nash is born. Stem cells from Nash’s cord blood are used to treat and cure his sister Molly affected by a rare genetic condition called Fanconi's anaemia.

2004-Dr. Kutluk Oktay of the Cornell Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility creates an embryo using an egg produced by ovarian tissue that had been frozen for six years and re implanted. In the experiment, doctors removed ovarian tissue from a woman about to undergo radiation treatment for breast cancer.

2006-Salome, a captive western lowland gorilla, gives birth to a healthy baby after being given human fertility drugs to treat a diminished ovarian reserve at Bristol Zoo Gardens in England.

2009- Octomom Nadya Suleman gives birth to six male and two female children conceived via in-vitro fertilization. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine expels Suleman’s fertility doctor Michael Kamrava.