# Daily Mail: Lord Winston says IVF clinics lie & rip us off!



## urbangirl (Jul 28, 2010)

Tell us something we don't know!
Just a couple of things he mentions is the cost of freezing embryos when liquid nitrogen costs "only a few pence per litre" and charging up to £3,200 for drugs that can be obtained on contracts for "£500 to £700."
He singles out the Bridge clinic, alleging that they post ridiculously high succes rates (he is an expert in the field so knows the reality).
It's an interesting article and all totally believable when you know that a scan in london costs £125 - £250 but £6 in other countries!!
It's in today's Mail.


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## ♥JJ1♥ (Feb 11, 2006)

There is an article in the Sunday Independent today as well

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-baby-business-watchdog-to-crack-down-on-the-scandal-of-ivf-clinics-2287604.html

I used to work at an NHS hospital and knew that a cost price cycle of IVF was less that £1100 with drugs! It kills me to think that I have paid £16,000 for a cycle for now

/links


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## mcclean (Mar 12, 2011)

I am utterly disgusted by the cost of treatment for couples and single women.  These organisations shouldn't be able to get away with it.  I have just been shopping around for drugs an different pharmacies charge different prices. What a rip off!


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## urbangirl (Jul 28, 2010)

I paid $70 for Pregnyl in the US, and £3 in Eastern Europe!!  I would have bought it in Eastern Europe but they called it HCG in the US and I didn't know it was the same thing!


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## roze (Mar 20, 2004)

This is the sort of thing that me enraged about when I hear overseas clinics being dissed for being, well , overseas, and out of the jurisdiction of the HFEA ( thank God). Like a lot of abroadies I found that overseas clinics to be much superior in standards and service than anything I came across in the uK, be it private or NHS. The cost of the medication was always notably cheaper even when exchange rates were taken into account. My experience of UK clinics has been quite dire and we felt that we were being so ripped off and given treatment when there was no chance of it working. I therefore agree with Lord Winston on that front. I used to write to the HFEA asking why they were so dismissive of overseas clinics whilst doing nothing about the exhorbitant charges levied by UK clinics who didn;t even seem to have tailored treatment programmes for their patients.

I was treated for several years, unsuccessfully, at a UK clinic who then decided to charge me £800 for a series of scans and bloods to support treatment abroad. I asked and asked for written confirmation as to what this would include and I never received it. I was told by a very nice senior consultant within  the department ( where I had alread spent about £20k on failed treatments) not to worry about it and she wrote to me to confirm that I could continue to have some scans at the normal rate, totalling £300 for all of these plus prescriptions, as I was about to embark on a fresh cycl in Spain.  At one session to have my bloods taken, despite having that letter with me the nurse decided to march me to the payment office to insist I paid the full £800. Naturally a row ensued in front of everyone as I was not going to be manhandled or shouted at, and accused of ripping them off when I had a letter from someone senior confirming the position!  I never went back there and found other cheaper ways of getting my support.

That same UK clinic took my money, and that point, my dreams, and put me on a waiting list for donor eggs which never transpired.  Thankfully I didnt rely on that as every time I called telling me I was next on the list. This went on for a few years. Five years later , when I was trying to have a second child, and therefore keen to have the tx in the UK for a change, I refused to hang up until they had pursued every angle possible to give me a real update on the situation. I had read saing that they had got their waiting list times down. I read about women having donor eggs after a short time. However we had been on it for5 years and had had no offers. 
I was shocked to find out that they had somehow, removed me from their list, telling me that as they'd heard I was having tx abroad, I was taken off it. This was despite being told several times that I was next on the list . I had in fact not been on it for some time. The whole thing smacked of complete incompetence. I have taken some action and am set to take further action into both this  debacle why I have paid over thousands of pounds for treatment which they should have known could never have worked. My partners sperm was so poor, no overseas clinic ( we went to three) would treat without ICSI and even then they were talking about us having to have donor sperm. So why did a UK clinic think it was fine and capable of producing a pregnancy without ICSI? There is no excuse for such a difference in opinion.

People who have tx are usually too busy and fraught to campaign but I do hope that issues like this are raised with the highest levels, and the disservice given to patients by the HFEA and others who are meant to protect the public stops and real support begins.

roze


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## Mistletoe (Holly) (Jan 1, 2007)

Why oh why do I read the driveling comments after these articles?     

Here is what I posted as a comment on the Independent article - hope you like it .......

'Goodness there are some nasty opinionated people in this world who think  it is their right to be totally rude and ill informed. It seems to me  that there are a number of good reasons why people with such opinions  should refrain from procreating themselves and I would not want to put  any child with them either, however much a home was needed.
No one  tells the fertile population that pop out babies without a second  thought into a terrible existence, to stop having children. Yet there  are very few tiny babies available for adoption, because society uses  the huge amount of tax that I pay working my socks off for the NHS for  the last 20 years, to help these people hang on to their children by  giving them benefits. Why should I have to pay for everyone else's  priorities and never have anything in return to help me? It makes me  sick that everyday I see thousands of pounds of NHS money spent on  drinking, irresponsible accidents, gangs, drugs, smoking, obesity and  such like, when I am suffering from a treatable condition that has  destroyed my life and that of my close family for the last 10 years. It  is not just the couple with infertility that suffer it is the potential  grand parents too, who have also paid taxes incidentally, that suffer.
No one tells the decent parents who pop out babies with thought into a nice existence to stop having children and adopt. 
But  because I met and married a man who turned out to be sterile, even  though he had had a child before, I am told that I have to provide a  social service. 
Some nasty little individual said that my precious  baby that I am going to give birth to in a month WILL be at least half  genetically abnormal - what How bloody stupid? I am having a donor  conceived child who appears to be just as healthy as any child conceived  naturally. Is this person saying that anyone with cancer or heart  disease in the family should not have a child because genetic traits  might be passed on for example? 
Some idiot also said I had left it  too late - what How bloody stupid? I started trying for a baby as  soon as I got married at 29. It took a long time to find out the problem  and sort out a course of action and have the treatment. My tests reveal  I have better fertility than many 20 year olds. I am a non smoker, non  drinker, healthy diet and exercise etc - most IVF treated patients take  their health very seriously - unlike many people in the general  population.
I am absolutely sick of these people ramming their  idiotic views down my throat. In the past, when I was feeling like my  entire life plan was ending (lets face it, most people think they will  get married and found a family and have a family in their old age and  someone to work for and leave worldly goods to) I would have cried at  some of the comments made on here. Now I have found a solution and thank  my lucky stars treatment has worked for me (thanks private clinic) I am  just angry.
I suggest people find out a little more about a subject,  the impact of a condition on an individual and stop making nasty  remarks. Just because you are invisible on the internet you think you  can be horrible to others. May be you should think about compassion and  try to be a better person first and foremost. The world would be a nicer  place'


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## Skybreeze (Apr 25, 2007)

Wow Hazel, well said... Bravo


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## Mrs E xx (May 22, 2011)

very well said, an amazing argument and def puts those lowlife people in thier place 

fantastic xxxxx


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## ali80 (Aug 11, 2009)

Great reply Hazel!! I love it!


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## greatgazza (May 27, 2010)

i don't often bother reading the comments posted after the articles but after seeing what you said hazel i had a look and i couldn't help myself posting as well i was so incensed.

unfortunately my response wasn't quite so considered and articulate as yours 

I responded to this guy bleachers who said these things:
50 years ago, the Western World didn't gorge itself on processed food. 50 years ago, feminism hadn't made it trendy for woman to work full time. 50 years ago woman could cook, today it's hard to find one young enough to bare children capable of knowing how to boil an egg.
50 years ago people got wed in their late teens early twenties and started a family from day one. Today woman must study first at university, have a meaningful career, save up for a decade or two for a home, etc. etc.

bleachers 6 days ago in reply to gharrison14
If they wanted a family, they should have got on with having one when they were young enough. 
It's no good bleating about it twenty/thirty years later, then expecting the taxpayer to pick-up the tab for infertility treatment, or expecting sympathy for the choice no-one forced them to make.
pullover5 and 2 more liked this Like Reply



> greatgazza 0 minutes ago in reply to bleachers
> Infertility is not a choice, just like getting cancer is not a choice. There are treatments to help both conditions so why should someone with cancer get treated and not someone with fertility issues? Fertility patients pay their taxes just like cancer patients. I would say see how much it would cost you to have your frontal lobotomy reversed but I don't think it would cost that much as it seems you have a neanderthal sized brain.


 

GGx


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## Mistletoe (Holly) (Jan 1, 2007)




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