Serious Doubts Hang Over IVF Infertility Treatments
One of the UK's leading authorities on IVF treatment for infertile couples, Lord Winston, has said traditional IVF treatment has raised cause for concern over its lack of results and the high level of fees demanded.
Now further studies have led to calls for further scrutiny of the subject.
"One of the major problems facing us in healthcare is that IVF has become a massive commercial industry," he said at the Guardian Hay Festival.
"It's very easy to exploit people by the fact that they're desperate and you've got the technology which they want, which may not work.
" Lord Winston's London colleagues came in for particularly heavy criticism.
"Amazing sums of money are being made through IVF.
It is really rather depressing to consider that some IVF treatments in London are charged at 10 times the fee that is charged in Melbourne, where there is excellent medicine, where IVF is just as successful, where they have comparable salaries.
So one has to ask oneself what has happened.
What has happened, of course, is that money is corrupting this whole technology.
" He then turned his attention to the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, saying, "The regulatory authority has done a consistently bad job.
It's not prevented the exploitation of women, it's not put out very good information to couples, it's not limited the number of unscientific treatments people have access to, it doesn't prevent sex selection and all sorts of other things people don't like because there are all sorts of ways around the law.
" This was reported back in 2007.
In August 2008, the British Medical Journal reported that two fertility treatments frequently recommended for childless couples are of little help.
One of the treatments, the fertility drug Clomid, came in for particularly heavy criticism from those involved in testing it.
Dr Simon Fishel, head of CARE Fertility, Nottingham, said earlier this year that some of the approaches often recommended were no more effective than having a romantic meal and a bottle of wine.
The study reported in the BMJ involved 580 women divided into three groups comparable in age, weight, and partner's sperm count.
193 were left to try and conceive naturally, 194 were given clomifene citrate, which includes drugs such as Clomid, thought to correct some forms of ovulatory dysfunction.
And the final 193 were given a treatment called intrauterine insemination (IUI), which is the delivering of sperm directly through the cervix.
This latter method had a success rate of 23 per cent, compared to 17 per cent for those conceiving naturally, and 14 per cent for those on the drug.
Although IUI appears to have had the greatest success, it was not significant enough to exclude other factors from being responsible.
Treatments like these are used to help hundreds of thousands of patients each year in the UK alone, where one in seven couples experience infertility, with around a third having problems where there are no obvious causes.
More recently a doctor's wife, Tina Richards, has written a book, Fertility Secrets, making serious allegations about the IVF "industry" and at the same time offering new hope to childless couples.
She says in the vast majority of cases, fertility drugs and IVF treatment are unnecessary, and they "could even hinder your chances of becoming pregnant.
" Could this be another case where the official version and the truth are worlds apart?
Now further studies have led to calls for further scrutiny of the subject.
"One of the major problems facing us in healthcare is that IVF has become a massive commercial industry," he said at the Guardian Hay Festival.
"It's very easy to exploit people by the fact that they're desperate and you've got the technology which they want, which may not work.
" Lord Winston's London colleagues came in for particularly heavy criticism.
"Amazing sums of money are being made through IVF.
It is really rather depressing to consider that some IVF treatments in London are charged at 10 times the fee that is charged in Melbourne, where there is excellent medicine, where IVF is just as successful, where they have comparable salaries.
So one has to ask oneself what has happened.
What has happened, of course, is that money is corrupting this whole technology.
" He then turned his attention to the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, saying, "The regulatory authority has done a consistently bad job.
It's not prevented the exploitation of women, it's not put out very good information to couples, it's not limited the number of unscientific treatments people have access to, it doesn't prevent sex selection and all sorts of other things people don't like because there are all sorts of ways around the law.
" This was reported back in 2007.
In August 2008, the British Medical Journal reported that two fertility treatments frequently recommended for childless couples are of little help.
One of the treatments, the fertility drug Clomid, came in for particularly heavy criticism from those involved in testing it.
Dr Simon Fishel, head of CARE Fertility, Nottingham, said earlier this year that some of the approaches often recommended were no more effective than having a romantic meal and a bottle of wine.
The study reported in the BMJ involved 580 women divided into three groups comparable in age, weight, and partner's sperm count.
193 were left to try and conceive naturally, 194 were given clomifene citrate, which includes drugs such as Clomid, thought to correct some forms of ovulatory dysfunction.
And the final 193 were given a treatment called intrauterine insemination (IUI), which is the delivering of sperm directly through the cervix.
This latter method had a success rate of 23 per cent, compared to 17 per cent for those conceiving naturally, and 14 per cent for those on the drug.
Although IUI appears to have had the greatest success, it was not significant enough to exclude other factors from being responsible.
Treatments like these are used to help hundreds of thousands of patients each year in the UK alone, where one in seven couples experience infertility, with around a third having problems where there are no obvious causes.
More recently a doctor's wife, Tina Richards, has written a book, Fertility Secrets, making serious allegations about the IVF "industry" and at the same time offering new hope to childless couples.
She says in the vast majority of cases, fertility drugs and IVF treatment are unnecessary, and they "could even hinder your chances of becoming pregnant.
" Could this be another case where the official version and the truth are worlds apart?
