Making children possible: A fertility doctor’s journey

June 5th, 2009

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by Anna Swindle
June 04, 2009

Dr. Marybeth Gerrity began her career researching ways to prevent pregnancy. But for years she’s helped pioneer options to increase fertility for women and men – from making test tube babies to keeping fertility an option for cancer patients.

“For me it was a perfect transition because I had reached a point in my academic research where I really wanted to see more tangible results of what I was doing,” said Gerrity, executive director of Northwestern University’s Oncofertility Consortium. “I wanted to see the work I was doing be more translatable.”

Joining the world of fertility research in the late 1970s, when the science was just beginning to take off, Gerrity has been a key player in the field’s development. At that point, only three to five percent of in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles resulted in a baby.