The case of the couple who have finally had a baby daughter after 15 attempts at IVF has hit the headlines in the last week, with generally sympathetic coverage about their pluck and courage. However, one short comment posted on The Times website illustrates the negative view many have of fertility treatment, asking what happened to evolution, and suggesting that some people are just not meant to have children.
Fertility treatment is something everyone seems to have strong opinions about, and many people refuse to recognise that infertility is a medical condition. It is true that not many of us would have the emotional strength to get through fifteen IVF cycles, or the financial resources to pay the sixty-four thousand pound bill. The couple in question had apparently remortgaged their home twice and worked hundreds of hours of overtime to pay for it, and in the end, it proved to be worth the effort. If someone had spent this much of their own hard-earned cash sorting out pretty much any other medical problem we'd be outraged that the NHS hadn't been able to help, not critical of the fact that they put so much of their own time and money into dealing with their problem.
You can see The Times article and comments here
I thought the story was great - it gave me a lot of hope for my own situation - but it did occur to me to wonder what the increased risk of ovarian cancer was with having so many stimulated cycles (presumably because most couples give up after fewer attemps due to the enormous cost of each cycle, there can't be many studies that have looked at the risks associated with large numbers of stimulated cycles?)?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right about research on this - I can't imagine there would be many women who have gone through so many cycles. Most of the concerns about the risks from fertility drugs seem to focus on clomifene (see this report
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