The Dutch scientific community working in Reproductive Medicine welcomes you to the 25th Anniversary Annual Meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Twenty five years ago 650 participants gathered in Bonn for the first meeting, everyone being welcomed at the door of the opening reception by Edwards, Cohen and Diedrich with a handshake. It typifies ESHRE’s tremendous success that we will not be able to copy this on this occasion.
The first ESHRE meeting was a revelation for many. Instead of the extremely limited therapeutic arsenal most delegates were used to, here they found new developments everywhere. Since then, this scientific revolution has continued, providing us with diagnostic and prediction tools and powerful interventions unheard of 25 years ago.
Nevertheless, we must remain a critical community and continue to evaluate these techniques scientifically and act according to the results. At the same time we should keep an open mind to the limitations and drawbacks of our current technology and find new paths to improve our understanding of this serious disease called infertility. It is this philosophy that underpins the scientific program of this 25th Meeting.
The venue for the meeting - Amsterdam - is in our view, especially appropriate as the city has a longstanding tradition as a centre of science, culture and commerce. From its humble beginnings as a 13th century fishing village on a river bed, the population of the city increased in our Golden Age during the 17th century to 14.000, always accepting new refugees from less enlightened countries. This tolerance paved the way to unprecedented wealth reshaping the city into its famous concentric crescent of canals. Nowadays, Amsterdam, or “Mokum” as we locals call the city, has a population of 740.000 residents, consisting of more than 150 nationalities with a unique mix of old and contemporary architecture, cultural attractions, creative industries, two universities and of course the congress centre of the RAI, venue for this meeting.
We do hope that the program of this anniversary meeting will evoke the same enthusiasm as the first meeting in Bonn.
Fulco van der Veen
Chairman of the Local Organising Committee
To keep up to date with the information on Amsterdam 2009, please bookmark this page and check regularly.