October 5, 2010: The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to Robert EDWARDS for his work on in vitro fertilization. Eugenics, cloning, stem cells... what passionate debates on the power and medical ethics around these procreations! Despite the development of genetics and molecular biology, questions about the destiny of man are constantly pushed back. Can we lengthen life? Are we descended from monkeys? With in vitro procreation, is humanity in the 21st century going through a turning point?

Jacques GONZALES, one of the French pioneers of in vitro fertilization, doctor at Pitié-Salpêtrière, former pediatrician, Professor of biology and historian of medicine at the Pierre and Marie Curie Faculty, gives us a story that goes back to myths and beliefs prehistoric. Its history of procreation, teeming with anecdotes, makes us relive the discoveries relating to the conception of man. The author, laureate of the Academy of Medicine, presents a new version of these "extraordinary" techniques, born of an eternally abundant human imagination whose roots are nourished by all the human sciences.