5 million IVF babies born

10:06 PM, Jul 4, 2012   |    comments
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By Kim Painter, USA TODAY 

Louise Brown has a lot of company. In-vitro fertilization (IVF) has led to the birth of 5 million people since Brown, the first so-called test tube baby, was born in 1978, a new report says.

Each year now, about 350,000 babies, or 0.3% of the world's newborns, arrive after IVF --- a process in which sperm and egg are joined in a lab dish before the resulting embryo is transferred to the womb -- says a European medical group.

The procedure works about one third of the time.

Some religious groups continue to frown on it.