# Great Critical Piece on the HFEA



## bennyB (Jan 16, 2007)

The writer is a former member of the hfea so knows what he is talking about!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/comment-assisted-fertility

Cheryl x


----------



## Caz (Jul 21, 2002)

Well, to be fair he doesn't know enitrely what he's talking about because he made a number of silly errors that should have been better researched (example; the octuplet mother had 6 embryos not 8 put back - 2 split after ET - a piece of information you can glean from reading The Sun so hardly difficult to research. I also noticed the error about one child family in China that was pointed out at the bottom... actually I was "eh? But, but..." when I read that so good to see they have printed a correction).

He makes some good points but I disagree with a couple of them; just because he sat on the HFEA for 5 years, does not necessarily make him an expert in their policies and how they affect us. Sometimes, the outsider looking in is better equipped to comment.

_"The rule says there must be no "incentive" to donate because mixing money and fertility is apparently offensive (except for doctors). Britain is now experiencing a severe shortage of both eggs and sperm as a direct result of the HFEA rule."_

The shortage of spem and eggs in the UK is NOT the result of donators not being "paid" and only being allowed to claim reasonable expenses, rather the result of the change in anonymity laws in April 2005. Prior to that sperm stocks in this country were fairly plentiful. Egg donors have always been harder to come by but this is more to do with egg collection being a somewhat more medically involved process than sperm donation. 
My personal belief is that if we didn't have rules against women being able to profit from their donation then the whole field is open to exploitation and to inequality i.e. supply would not increase by much and with the demmand being what it is, eggs would end up going to the "highest bidder" . There was an article linked to on FF a while ago about Indian egg donors and it was clear from that article that exploitation does go on where there is financial incentive involved. This is not like donating blood - this is donating your genetic heritage and creating human beings we're talking about here. It should be treated with due consideration and respect and not done for the money IMO.

_"I find distasteful the process by which an American clinic agreed to insert eight embryos in the womb of a disturbed mother of six. It is dangerous to all concerned. But I would not ban doctors from offering multiple embryo transfer or women from seeking it. The world still remains free for human error, just."_


I'm going to disagree with that point too. It is not commonly natural for women to have high order mutilpe births. Triplets conceived naturally is extremely rare, higher than that even more so. We have about a 10% chance of having twins in the normal population yet IVF pregnancies are currently running at about 25% multiple births. Why should fertility patients expect to be able to have more chance of multiples than the average population? We shouldn't IMO, even though I know some will argue that it taking us so much to get pregnant in the first place means we should be able to have the option of a BOGOF deal but, frankly, that's not an idea I have ever been comfortable with. I would dearly have loved to have twins (I think most of us secretly long for them) but I recognise it's not my right to have them. 
Every mutiple birth becomes an extra financial burden on the NHS. Even a normal and healthy twin pregnancy with no complications is usually consultant led as opposed to midwife led and thus more expensive to manage. I'm sorry to say it all comes down to money but it does. We have a state run health service that, ok, is not as great as it used to be but it is still one of the best in the world. If and when we are all private paying citizens and have our own health insurance and our actions do not impose any additional financial burdens on public money then, yeah, let's have as many embryos as we like and let's have high order multiples etc. Until then, there's such a thing as social responsibility and if we need legislation in place to prevent stuff like the octuplet mum situation in the U.S. then that is how it must be. 
Incidently I am not a supporter of SET legislation; I still think it should be a matter of choice, but I think it should be informed choice and with clinical guidelines (NOT legislation).

_"The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society are already proposing that egg freezing be permitted only for "medical" conditions, such as prior to a cancer operation, but not for "non-medical or lifestyle" reasons.

A member of the HFEA, Bill Ledger, was reported on Sunday as saying that "the group I worry about are women who are healthy and want to have kids, but do it later". I imagine they worry too, but what business is it of his? He added that the process is still uncertain and that these women were "taking a gamble for their future". Who is he to deny them that gamble? He then says that it costs £5,000, presumably more than the professor feels the poor things can possibly handle. He is a professor, but not the editor of Which?"_


I completely agree with that! What right has anyone got to say why we want to freeze eggs and how we should spend our money. Again, related back to the point above about the NHS, if it was state funded cycles and freezing, that might be a different matter but, surely, If I want to go and spend £5k on a car that would be ok? That's a lifestyle choice too? 


_"The HFEA has changed from liberating in-vitro fertilisation and stem cell research from the forces of religious and political reaction, and is now in danger of becoming an ever more obsessive regulator of the lives of others. That this one-time fount of liberty might now oppose a liberating innovation in women's history is truly sad. I hope it declines to do so."_

And that's another valid point. I'm not a huge fan of the HFEA; I do think they overreach the boundries of their responsibilities from time to time and perhaps there needs to be a body to oversee governing bodies in this country to rein them in when they start getting a bit power hungry. However, I would still rather have a governing body overseeing fertility treatment than not, and know that someone out there is making sure we are not being manipulated or fleeced. I think there's a lot of countries out there with nothing at all like the HFEA and they don't necessarily represent themsselves accurately or operate in the patient's best interests at all!

C~x


----------



## roze (Mar 20, 2004)

The HFEA should perhaps instead be making it their business to monitor UK clinic activities more thoroughly from the point of view of appropriate medical treatment, accurate diagnosis,value for money and customer satisfaction. Instead they pursue a very successful and well regarded consultant's clinic for not having filled in a form or two. I am sick of hearing, time after time, of people who have had incorrect and inaccurate diagnoses of infertility and who have had to have expensive treatments completely unnecessarily. 

From the perspective of myself and my partner, it would appear that only that former Soviet Republic of Ukraine have been capable of diagnosing a serious but fairly common sperm problem which would have rendered all previous non ICSI IVF and IUI attempts in the UK completely unproductive regardless of the quality of my eggs. A waste of 5 years and £25k.
.


----------



## Junnie (May 17, 2008)

Oh and have you read the comments on that article?

A lot of UNinformed people making stupid comments see below



> As long as nothing is provided free on the NHS and there is a second "parent" (it doesn't have to be a man, just a second person who is legally financially liable for results) then I don't really care what people do.


----------

