Another IVF scandal story

You may have heard about the "exclusive" story in The Sun newspaper yesterday, claiming that a couple had abandoned their IVF twins in hospital after their birth because they were the wrong sex.

According to the report, the couple had left their twin girls in hospital because they'd wanted boys, and had immediately asked when they could start trying IVF again in order to have a child of the right sex. Their ages added to the scandal, as the husband was in his early seventies and his wife in her late fifties. Not only that, they'd also travelled to India for their treatment, and were of Indian descent. Since the twins had been born, the paper claimed the parents hadn't been to see them at all.

As is often the case with this kind of story, there does seem to be another side to it. The local trust involved has denied the reports, claiming that in fact the babies have been moved from the hospital where they were born to another closer to the parent's home so that they could see them more easily. Another member of the family has suggested that language problems may have led to some kind of misunderstanding.

Whatever the truth, it is stories like this that muddy the waters of opinion about fertility treatment, and add to the general assumption that IVF is too often abused. The reality is that this kind of IVF scandal story makes the front page precisely because it occurs so infrequently, and that the details seem to suggest that this one may not have occurred at all.

There's an update on the story in The Times at www.timesonline.co.uk

Commentary on funding

If you're struggling to pay for fertility treatment, at the end of a long NHS waiting list, or just wondering what the situation might be if you ever needed IVF, you'll be interested to read a commentary by Clare Brown, the Chief Executive of Infertility Network UK, about funding for treatment.

Four years after the government's own advisory body suggested those who needed IVF should have access to three funded treatment cycles, the reality is that in many areas people struggle to get any NHS treatment at all, and Clare's commentary highlights this very clearly. You can read it at www.bionews.org.uk

Fertility risk for painters and decorators

There's always a lot of speculation about exposure to chemicals and infertility, and now a new study has shown that men who work as painters and decorators may be putting their fertility at risk if they use products containing glycol ethers.

The study surveyed men at fourteen fertility clinics across the UK, and found that painters and decorators who used products such as water-based paints containing glycol ethers on a regular basis were two and a half times more likely to have poor sperm motility. Sperm should swim forward in a straight line fairly quickly, and those with poor motility may move erratically, or just twitch about rather than moving ahead, which makes them less likely to fertilise an egg suggessfully.

The research was carried out by a team from the University of Sheffield, and published in the BMJ journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. You can read more about it on the University website at www.shef.ac.uk

Identifying premature menopause risk

One or two women in every hundred will experience a premature menopause, when their ovaries stop functioning many years before they should. We know that for some women this seems to be a hereditary condition, and if your mother had an early menopause, you are more at risk of experiencing the same thing yourself.

Now researchers from China and the United States have identified a specific gene mutation that they've found in a percentage of women who have a premature menopause, and they hope to be able to use this to work out those who are most at risk. Details of their research can be found at www.ajhg.org

if you think you may be likely to have an early menopause, are experiencing menopausal symptoms way before you should or if you already know that you are amongst the percentage of women who have a premature menopause, you can get help and support from the Daisy Network

Chemicals and future fertility

We're all exposed to more and more chemicals in our everyday lives, found in everything from packaging to pesticides, and there's growing interest in how, or whether, these can affect our fertility.

Now, a team at Nottingham University have been given a grant to study the effects of some of these toxins on female mammal reproduction. They'll be focusing on how potential problems may pass from mother to foetus by studying sheep. It is thought that exposure to these products may not damage the fertility of the woman herself, but could instead have an impact on a foetus growing in her womb. If this proves to be the case, we may be storing up fertility problems for future generations.

There's so much discussion about chemicals and fertility, that it will be fascinating to see what the team in Nottingham uncover. You can read more about the project at www.nottingham.ac.uk

What counts as consent?

You may remember the case of Diane Blood, who had to fight to get the right to use her husband's sperm after he fell into a coma and died. She wasn't allowed to do this in the UK, and her legal battle went on for some years. Eventually, she was allowed to use his sperm, although she had to go abroad to Belgium to do so, and she went on to have two children.

Now another British woman is trying to follow down the same path. Her husband died suddenly, just a week after they'd been to see a consultant for fertility advice. She was granted permission by a judge to have sperm taken from her husband, but must now fight to be able to store and then use that sperm.

It's a tricky legal area, as it all focuses on consent, which someone clearly can't give after they've died, but in this case the woman must hope that the fact that they had been to see a specialist so shortly before his death must make his intentions at the time very clear. The woman's MP, Vince Cable , has now proposed a change in the law so that evidence from a fertility specialist in a case such as this can be admissable.

You can read more about the story here

Could you be a member of the HFEA?

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the body that regulates IVF in the UK, is looking for a number of new members. Some will be doctors or scientists who have experience in the field, but the majority of spaces on the authority are for lay members, who will have other relevant skills to offer. It's a fascinating opportunity for anyone who has an interest in this area, and if you want to find out more you can follow this link