Millennium babies by IVF

The maverick Italian fertility specialist, Severino Antinori, has announced that he intends to deliver IVF millennium babies by caesarian section. Dr Antinori said last week that he had helped 14 women conceive by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques and said that he hoped to make the first incision within two seconds of the new millennium to produce the first baby - followed by the rest before midday. All the couples are Italian, with a variety of male and female fertility problems. Dr Antinori has attracted both publicity and controversy over the past decade with what have been seen as unorthodox practices. He has helped a number of post-menopausal women have babies, declared his support for human cloning as a way for infertile men to have children and as recently as last month he announced that he had helped a number a sterile men have healthy babies by maturing their sperm inside rats' testicles.