Professor Susan Bewley
Susan Bewley, Professor of Complex Obstetrics, Kings College London, qualified as a doctor in 1982 and worked as an obstetrician for almost 30 years. She has a degree in medical law and ethics, was the first woman trained in Maternal-Fetal Medicine in the UK and has edited several books and textbooks. Her main research areas are severe maternal diseases and and violence in pregnancy. Although not working directly in fertility or IVF, she has observed the much-hyped successes and much less well recognised harms as an obstetrician over the past decades. She was a member of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence Fertility Guideline Development Group and chaired its recent Intrapartum Guideline Development Group. The talk gives a brief explanation about biology, why people are having children older and how this worsens outcomes. She describes how assisted reproduction technology has contributed to this trend.