As I have assembled the articles for this first issue of volume 23 of Human Fertility, the world is in lockdown because of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. I am sitting at my kitchen table in Sheffield not having left the house for the last five days. This seems a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the Fertility 2020 conference held in Edinburgh less than three months ago, when we all met, caught up to date with friends and colleagues, listened to the presentations, looked at the posters, and browsed the exhibition stands. At the moment, one wonders if we will ever hold another conference again (or at least for the rest of 2020) as conference centres are turned into make-shift hospitals and people unable to travel. Perhaps conferences will change forever as we get used to video conferencing and using other digital means to communicate. Indeed, this may not be bad for the planet and our concerns about climate change. So perhaps the abstracts from the Fertility 2020 conference that we publish in this edition of the journal may become a symbol of bygone era.
Another historical change which happened at the Fertility 2020 conference was the launch of a new society in the UK: The Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists (ARCS). This is a new professional society formed out of the merger between the Association of Biomedical Andrologists (ABA), the Association of Clinical Embryologists (ACE), and the British Andrology Society (BAS). All three of these organizations have been strong supporters of Human Fertility since its inception, and we are pleased that the ARCS will be continuing with this tradition. In this issue a commentary article by Kasraie et al. (Citation2020) describing how the ARCS was formed is published for the future historical record.
Finally, if history is the theme of this issue, then I draw your attention to the book review by Cooke (Citation2020) of Roger Gosden’s excellent biography of Bob Edwards ‘Let There Be Life: An Intimate Portrait of Robert Edwards and His IVF Revolution’.
I hope you enjoy this issue of the journal.
Editor in Chief
Academic Unit of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine, Department of Oncology and Metabolism, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
[email protected].
References
- Cooke, I. (2020). Let there be life: An intimate portrait of Robert Edwards and his IVF revolution [Review of the book Let there be life: An intimate portrait of Robert Edwards and his IVF revolution by R. Gosden]. Human Fertility, 23, 38–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2020.1741117.
- Kasraie, J., Lewis, S., & Sanders, D. (2020). All aboard the ARCS. Human Fertility, 23, 2–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2020.1747156.