IVF treatment. Italian obstetrician and embryologist Severino Antinori using a light microscope to inject human sperm into a human egg cell during in vitro fertilisation (IVF). This method is known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The injected sperm fertilises the egg. The resulting zygote is grown in the lab until it reaches an early stage of embryonic development and then implanted into the uterus. Pregnancy then proceeds as normal. Antinori is a controversial figure. In 1994 he carried out IVF in a 62 year old. She gave birth at 63, the oldest woman to do so at the time. In 2002 he claimed to have impregnated a woman with cloned embryos, an illegal act that has never been verified.