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Women 'risk their lives and bankruptcy for IVF'
Peter Dominiczak14 Sep 2009
Women are risking their lives to have IVF babies, claims a fertility expert.
Professor Sammy Lee said some women are also prepared to risk bankruptcy and are driven by an urge "stronger than addiction and more powerful than obsession".
He said he has helped some couples through 12 cycles of IVF, despite the maximum number of treatments provided on the NHS being three.
Professor Lee pioneered egg donation in the UK while at the IVF programme at Wellington Hospital, St John's Wood.
He said: "The quest to have children can become a vortex that gets faster and faster and sucks people in. Women will sell everything and anything to have the treatment if they are short of funds. They will risk their lives."
Professor Lee added: "I have treated young women with cancer who have refused to have treatment for their illness until they have got pregnant and given birth, knowing they are risking their lives.
"Some of these women do, indeed, go on to die, but they die happy, feeling that they have achieved something greater than their own continued existence."
He also said some clinicians continue treatment despite knowing there is little chance of success: "The advances of science seem to promise women everlasting hope, which means they put ever more trust and hope in the doctors.
"Clinicians should refuse to treat these couples because further treatment is highly unlikely to work, but after helping that couple through three IVF attempts, you can get too pulled in to insist that enough is enough."
But Dr Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said that for some patients it was necessary to exhaust all the options: "I have patients who undergo treatment even though I've counselled them that their chance of success is less than five per cent."
