Science: Babies now available thorough the Lottery

66-baby.jpgWe’re used to seeing white goods and TVs as prizes in lotteries. But a new British Lottery seems to have gone too far by offering a baby. Okay, not an actual live one, but all you need to make one, minus a womb. (You have to provide that bit yourself.)

It’s a lottery specifically focused on IVF treatment, offering thousands of pounds’ worth of fertility treatment as prize for the winning ticket holder.

Tickets will be a pricey £20 available first online, then in newsagents.

According to Reuters, Britain’s Gambling Commission has granted a license to fertility charity, To Hatch, to run the game from July 30.

“Every month, winners can scoop £25,000 worth of tailor-made treatments at one of the UK’s top five fertility clinics for the price of a 20 pound ticket.”

We’re not alone in saying this doesn’t sound right. How are you going to tell your child you won it in a lottery? I mean, maybe there is some broader point here about the broader availability of IVF treatment but..

What next? Win a kidney? Breast augmentation? Don’t tell me those things already exist. I worry enough about humanity as it is.

[via Reuters]
Anna Leach