Fertility specialist Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg has never been one to shy away from controversy. He has weathered accusations that he is “playing God” since the 1970s, when he was part of the team of scientists that brought Louise Brown into the world through the first successful in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. The outcry got louder in the early 2000s when he began offering clients at his Encino-headquartered Fertility Institutes the ability to select the biological sex of their baby, and became louder still when he started promoting eye color selection in 2008. “Controversy, I don’t think, is ever bad – it inspires thought, which inspires advancement and understanding,” he told the Business Journal. It helps that being controversial has been good for business. News coverage of Fertility Institutes’ eye color service helped boost the number of patients for all procedures by as much as 250 percent over five years. Though Steinberg halted the service back in 2009 due to a combination of factors – including backlash from the public and less-than-ideal equipment – he is now taking reservations once again. Read the full story in the June 25 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.
