We tend to give utilitarianism a hard time in “Pointed Remarks”. But sometimes we could do with a bit more utilitarianism. It might keep the media – and many doctors, too – from being so dewy-eyed about apparent successes. Take IVF, which celebrated, so to speak, its 40th anniversary this week, with the birthday of Louise Brown.
In some respects, IVF has been quite a success. An estimated 8 million IVF children have been born since then. A thriving industry has grown up, worth some US$15 billion, making lots of doctors, scientists, technicians and administrators very wealthy. That is the happiness side of the ledger.
But how about the women who endured cycle after cycle of IVF without conceiving? Their lives have been filled with suffering as a result. And there are far more of them than women who eventually conceived. How about the destruction of millions upon millions of human embryos? And how about the disturbing future of IVF – designer babies and genetically-engineered children? That is the pain side of the ledger. It hasn’t been quantified, of course, but it must be acknowledged. I would venture to say that the balance is negative.
Whether I’m right or wrong about that, I do think that we need a clearer vision of the negative side of assisted reproductive technology.
In some respects, IVF has been quite a success. An estimated 8 million IVF children have been born since then. A thriving industry has grown up, worth some US$15 billion, making lots of doctors, scientists, technicians and administrators very wealthy. That is the happiness side of the ledger.
But how about the women who endured cycle after cycle of IVF without conceiving? Their lives have been filled with suffering as a result. And there are far more of them than women who eventually conceived. How about the destruction of millions upon millions of human embryos? And how about the disturbing future of IVF – designer babies and genetically-engineered children? That is the pain side of the ledger. It hasn’t been quantified, of course, but it must be acknowledged. I would venture to say that the balance is negative.
Whether I’m right or wrong about that, I do think that we need a clearer vision of the negative side of assisted reproductive technology.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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by Michael Cook | 28 Jul 2018 | 1 comment
The 40th anniversary of the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby, on July 25 has been the occasion for cracking champagne bottles and congratulatory media features. But a British IVF pioneer, Professor Lord Robert Winston, contends that celebration should be much more subdued.
In an interview with The Irish News, he said that “people are being sucked into IVF without a full recognition of exactly how low the success rate is”. Private sector fertility clinics, he says, are on a “gravy train” in the UK. Mixing the "desperation" of couples for a child and the "avarice" of private practice is a "dangerous combination".
"The HFEA [Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority] records success rate per embryo transfer, but that in itself is misleading, because a large number of women start a cycle but never get to the embryo transfer stage, either because their ovaries don't respond or because the eggs don't fertilise."
A significant problem of dealing with infertility is that is could have "50, 60 or 70 different causes" – and some of these could be treated with means which are less invasive and stressful than IVF.
"The first thing we need to change, which is something we're not doing in reproductive medicine, is to regard infertility as a symptom ... Right now, we regard it as a diagnosis and it's fundamentally wrong to offer a treatment on the basis of symptoms – because the underlying cause of the symptom will vary ..."In many cases, in-vitro fertilisation is not the best [treatment] – but it's the most profit ... Unexplained infertility is a nonsense; it's a failure to make a diagnosis. People are reluctant to go through with investigations, which in my view are justified, because at the moment, so many patients are failing to get pregnant with an IVF cycle and then get pregnant after the IVF has finished."One of the important issues is making a diagnosis and finding other more effective simpler remedies, but most clinics are now geared up to do IVF, so they don't actually treat the underlying issue."
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