Risks of IVF?

Do you think women are putting their lives at risk from IVF treatment? That was the claim just a few weeks ago in some national newspapers - see here . I think women who have dozens of cycles of IVF are always going to be in the minority - not many of us could afford the financial or emotional cost. It is true that a little more honesty about the chances of success might not be a bad idea, but most women come to their own decisions about when to call it a day.

As for the suggestion that women with cancer are dying because they've waited to get pregnant - surely they would be better advised to consider freezing embryos rather than putting their cancer treatment off for years? If women are doing this, it must raise questions about the quality of the counselling they've been receiving.

Then finally, there's the thorny issue of IVF drugs and cancer - it's one of those subjects that pops up now and again. No one has any proof, but there have been a few high profile women who have believed that their IVF treatment was related to their cancer. In fact, earlier this year a large-scale study found no evidence of this whatsoever, and it seems somewhat irresponsible to raise the subject without mentioning this.

I think if you're going to make claims like these, you need to be able to back them up with solid evidence. Scientists often say the rest of us rely too much on anecdotal evidence, but there seems to be little more than that for any of these suggestions.