
IN VITRO FERTILISATION, OR IVF, IS LATIN FOR "FERTILISATION IN GLASS".
This is due to the fact that in the past, laboratory equipment such as test tubes and petri
dishes were always made of glass; and since test tubes and petri dishes have always been such
iconic symbols for Scientific Progress, the term IVF – along with “test tube baby” – was thus
coined.
In spite of its name, babies are neither grown in test tubes nor put together like some kind
of chemical reaction: in fact, the whole process is fairly simple, relatively painless, minimally
invasive and hardly involves test tubes at all.