ABSTRACT
Success rates indirectly legitimise individual reproductive technologies, success being a necessary, if hardly sufficient argument taken in isolation. The optimisation of success rates is an argument which gives rise to additional moral problems. One first ethical consideration has to do with the fundamental significance of taking success rates into account when legitimising in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures. The more the quantitative success rates of IVF increase, the more this medical achievement abandons its status as a ‘clinical trial’ in favour of ‘therapy’, even though sterility is not effectively overcome. Moreover, experimental IVF interventions assume a therapeutic significance which is not only purely individual, the efforts behind them being aimed at the well-being of the woman concerned, but also comprehensive, collectively aiming to surmount female sterility. Taking IVF success rates into account only makes sense from a teleological point of view.
