Dr. Sherman Silber, a pioneer in microsurgery and infertility, is considered a leading authority on IVF, sperm retrieval, ICSI, vasectomy reversal, tubal ligation reversal, egg and embryo freezing, testicle and ovary freezing and transplantation, and the reproductive biological clock. He performed the world’s first microsurgical vasectomy reversal, as well as the first testicle transplant, in the 70’s, and now in the current century, the world’s first ovary transplant. He was the first to develop the TESE and MESA techniques for retrieving testicular and epididymal sperm in azoospermic men. He headed the clinical MIT team that first mapped and sequenced the Y chromosome in infertile men and helped to discover the now famous DAZ gene for male fertility. His research includes also the study of reproduction and fertility in zoo animals and endangered species. Most recently he has perfected the preservation of fertility for cancer patients with ovarian freezing and transplantation and thereby figured out how to extend the reproductive biological clock of women. He has helped pioneer minimal ovarian stimulation to reduce IVF costs. He is a urologist who teaches very difficult gynecologic procedures (like tubal reversal and adenomyectomy) to gynecologists. He has even recently answered the age-old question of why the dinosaurs went extinct by extending his research on male infertility and the Y chromosome, discovering that the change in earth temperature 65,000,000 years ago led to the birth of a skewed male/female sex ratio.
Sherman J. Silber
He is the author of three medical textbooks, five best-selling books for the layman and more than 200 scientific papers on human infertility and reproduction. His most recent book, “How to Get Pregnant”, published by Little, Brown and Company in 2007, is a completely revised and updated edition of his classic series of “How To Get Pregnant” books, which have been major bestsellers in the United States. Dr. Silber’s books have been published in English, Spanish, German, and Russian.
Dr. Silber went to medical school at the University of Michigan, did post-graduate training at Stanford University, and then again at the University of Michigan. From 1967 to 1969, he provided medical care via the U. S. Public Health Service to Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts. Then he taught at the University of Melbourne Medical School in Australia, and later at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco. He is a scientific collaborator at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a full professor at the University of Amsterdam, and at the Kato Clinic in Tokyo. His major clinical medical practice is at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. He always gives credit for his surgical dexterity to the training he received during medical school from an uneducated but brilliant Black janitor, Jimmy Crudup, who washed instruments in the animal lab at the University of Michigan.