Introduction

Each advance in assisted reproductive technology (ART) raises the question of whether scientific knowledge alone provides an adequate basis for understanding our fertility and its vicissitudes. The issues which emerge from ourselves as fertile/infertile beings have arguably not become simpler through ‘miraculous’ and expensive procedures on offer from infertility clinics, but yet more complex. The contributors to this book ask whether experiences of infertility can be advanced by the scientific refinement of techniques which take place in the laboratory, and whether identifying infertility as primarily a medical problem remains the best way forward. They highlight the interface between the medical and the experiential and also the borderland where fertility and infertility cannot readily be differentiated. The diverse approach of the contributors opens up a dialectic between the scientific knowledge of clinical practitioners and the multilayered psychology of a complex human experience that we label infertility.