Test-Tube Babies Doing Fine

Test-tube babies are just as apt to be healthy and mentally alert as are infants conceived the old fashioned way, according to researchers who compared matched groups of children. Dr. James L. Mills, a researcher at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said the study should assure parents that children born through in vitro fertilization--the so-called test-tube babies--will have no increased risk of abnormal development.

In a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers compared the development of 83 children born as a result of in vitro fertilization with 93 children born from normal conception. The children were matched by age (12 to 36 months), sex, race, age of the mother and by other factors. The children in both groups were subjected to a series of tests for abnormalities and birth defects, including a variety of imaging techniques, such as ultrasound, that could detect physical abnormalities of internal organs. Mills said the findings, though based on a relatively small sampling of children, showed there was no statistically important difference between the groups. “When you take our paper, along with other data . . . it’s very reassuring,” Mills said.