Naprotechnology – falsehood or misapprehension?

Abstract

The article is a voice in the debate over the legality and sense of the infertility treatment methods, on the grounds of the recent petition by 100 Polish scientists to ban the in vitro extracorporeal fertilization method and replace it with NaProTechnology (NPT), which they claim more efficient. Having analyzed relevant literature on NaProTechnology and then confronted it with the reported efficiency of various assisted reproduction techniques (ART), the author arrives at the conclusion that the comparison of these methods by no means can legitimize any assumptions of supposedly higher or at least comparable effectiveness of NaProTechnology over the in vitro methods. Moreover, the huge differences in the conditions of using the NPT and the in vitro methods make any such comparisons undependable. There seems to be more sense in comparing NaProTechnology to conventional methods of infertility treatment; however, the latter comparison does not provide any solid grounds to prove the higher effectiveness of NPT either. The author suggests that the choice of the treatment method should be up to the patients suffering from infertility, on condition they are supplied with objective and unbiased information of all the applicable options.