Christopher Jones

Short Biography

Christopher Jones is an American naturalist with a strong interest in health economics, particularly as it applies to improving outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. In early 2003, he presented a report, first to then-British Chancellor Gordon Brown and then in the House of Commons, that led to policy changes to the maximum allowable number of transferred embryos during the course of a woman's in vitro fertilisation treatment. The Times in London reported that Jones' report induced immediate action by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority but divided fertility doctors: half viewed this as a good policy from a public health vantage point, the other half viewed the move as over-regulation in personal affairs. Regardless, Jones showed in a co-authored letter that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that twins are six-times more likely to occur following in vitro fertilisation, compared with natural conceptions, even when only one embryo was implanted. This led to cost-reductions to the National Health Services of GBP 60 million per year that would otherwise have been spent on ineffective treatments or neonatal intensive care due to excessive numbers of multiple births. He was appointed director of bilateral collaborations at the Center for Study of Multiple Birth, a non-profit devoted entirely to research into the health of multiples. Although few had heard of such a trend in 2003, Jones predicted and found that medical tourism and more particularly reproductive tourism away from the United Kingdom, along with an epidemic of multiple births, would be the likely results of fertility regulation.