Professor Carl Djerassi believes more parents will chose to start a family using IVF, even if they do not have fertility problems

Sex could soon exist purely for fun, as more women turn to IVF to have babies, the inventor of the contraceptive pill has claimed.

Professor Carl Djerassi, 91, believes the Pill could become redundant as soon as 2050, as more men and women choose to start a family through the 'insurance policy' of IVF, even if they do not have fertility problems.

It means would-be parents would freeze their eggs and sperms before being steralised, rendering the Pill pointless.

The professor - who played a crucial role in developing the oral contraceptive in 1951 - says advances in fertility treatment will create a 'generation manana' in which people know they can control the timing of parenthood, without any repercussions.

But it also means sex will become a futile exercise for those wanting to reproduce - and will instead become purely recreational.

Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, he said: 'The vast majority of women who will choose IVF in the future will be fertile women who have frozen their eggs and delayed pregnancy.

'I predict that many of these women will be fertilised by IVF methods because of the advances in genetic screening. And once that happens then IVF will start to become a normal non-coital method of having children.'

He added: 'For them, the separation between sex and reproductions will be 100 per cent.'

Professor Djerassi also predicted there will be more IVF fertilisations among fertile women in the next few decades - 'say by 2050' - than there currently is among those who are fertility-impaired.

At the moment, that figure is around five million.

But the professor cast doubt on the possibility of a male contraceptive pill, claiming it would take too long to test whether the product would have an impact on sperm quality.

The professor, who has now retired from scientific work, has just penned his new autobiography, In Retrospect: From The Pill to the Pen.