To wonder how, with all the funding cuts in the NHS, fertility treatment is still funded?

[Misfitless]

I know I will be flamed.

I considered name-changing, but it's cowardly, so I will take the flack.

Maybe infertility treatment has been cut, and I just haven't heard about it, but I have certainly heard that some cancer treatments have been cut.

I know it's easy for me to say, I have not had fertility issues, but I genuinely think that if I did, I wouldn't go down the route of expecting the NHS to fund it.

I am the only person on MN who feels this way/the only one who will admit it?

Meant to say, that I'm not blaming infertility treatments exclusively for lack of funds for cancer patients, merely saying that I cannot comprehend how the life of a not yet conceived child is worth creating, when the life of a cancer patient is deemed not worthy of extending as much as possible, if that's what the patient wants.

Maybe they would. I very much doubt it though, thaigreen.

This is quite a controversial thing to say, I expect. But I do wonder, if we were all living 40 years ago, if adoption might have been the right thing afterall for many more posters, what with there being no reliable fertility treatment back then.

It's all heresay, but I suspect that more people might have opted for adoption than do now. Now, with fertility treatment as it is, there is a chance that you will become pregnant with one cycle, and many PCTs offer three cycles which really up your chances, so many people never get to the adoption stage, as they do indeed have a child before they have explored it as an option.

Just a thought. I'm not saying that adoption is a last resort/second best/consolation prize or anything that anyone said earlier.

Because it's not about the life of a not yet conceived child. It's about treating DH and me because we have something wrong with us that has a profoundly negative effect on our lives. Of course people with serious life threatening illnesses should be treated. But people are treated with a variety of non-life threatening problems too, and that includes problems conceiving.

Anyway I really am leaving this thread. Tbh I am pretty devastated that people think this way.

I think the problem here is that you are looking at fertility treatment as spending solely to create new lives. This is not the case. Fertility treatment is about spending to improve the lives of people (the want-to-be-parents) who already exist.

Like any medical condition infertility can be devastating to a couple and can have a negative effect on mental health and well-being. Having children may not be a right but it is a reasonable expectation for a person to have in the same way that being able to hear clearly or walk up a flight of stairs comfortably or use my hands to type is not a 'right' but is a reasonable expectation to have.

If I had a condition that meant I was unable to hear/walk comfortably/use my hands I could reasonably expect treatment on the NHS (where it was possible for that particular issue) to help resolve those issues and thus improve my quality of life. Why shouldn't somebody expect the same for infertility?

Yes, there are alternatives to infertility (eg: adoption) which may work for some but it's reasonable that some people would want something else. I guess in the same way some people might prefer the use of a wheelchair to a painful operation with a 40% chance of being able to walk again but it's not something everyone would want. (Sorry, I recognize that's not a great analogy as adoption is more complex than that and something you may choose regardless of fertility - I will probably adopt my next child despite having had no problems conceiving DD)

I really do think it is reasonable to look at treatments in terms of the quality of life and longevity they will give patients and I think it's hard to argue that IVF treatment doesn't improve the quality of life for many parents struggling to conceive. Arguably successful IVF leading to a healthy delivery is probably one of the best treatments in that regards as you would expect the couple receiving it to have 30+ years of parenting. Many cancer treatments merely prolong life by a matter of weeks which, whilst no doubt invaluable to the patient and their family doesn't necessarily give the same value for money as IVF in terms of improving quality and longevity of life.

I'd love to adopt, my dh is type 1 diabetic and apparently that's a problem I'll admit I haven't looked into it that much as we hit that roadblock almost immediately, seems daft that we can have as many bio kids as we want in theory but can't adopt. Like pp he's fit and healthy. Lots of hurdles with adoption, it's a real shame.

Infertile couples adopting because of no reliable fertility treatments does sound like a last resort.

Why don't more fertile couples adopt as a first resort, I wonder?

My point is adoption is not a solution for infertility.

Misfitless

As I have mentioned previously, I have lost several family members to cancer. So I definitely know how that is like.

What you have to understand though is that there are several cancer treatments that are like a bottomless pit when it comes to cost. I sometimes feel we haven't moved far from the days of charlatans because, really, they are still trying to understand how cancer works, and any treatment is really a drug trial. Yes, it would have been nice if I had my relatives around longer, but at the end of the day, they lived great lives which cannot be taken away from them.

IVF on the other hand is forward-looking and actually quite a mechanical process (we all know what it takes to have a baby) that could be a lot cheaper, if only the NHS was not in such shambles. That is proven by other developed countries offering the same treatment for less.

If you think having children is a lifestyle choice that should not be funded, we should NOT pay for:

• treatment against lung cancer caused by smoking;
• treatment for injuries sustained for most accidents (do you really have to drive or climb that tree?)
• maternity care;

... And so forth.

Maybe im just bitter because im currently struggling to conceive (have one child...doesnt make the desire to have another any less). My story ....suffered from severe debilitating pain from 14 years old....constatly fobbed off by doctors even told i had convinced myself i was in pain and thats why i was feeling it.
Paid to see a private doctor (after a lot of saving) and had an operation to discover severe endometriosis. Had this been discovered 10 years previous instead of being fobbed off maybe it could have been treated and my fertility maintained. Therefore its the least the NHS can do to provide IVF and im sure there are many women like me !

I found the IVF success rates, although couldn't find a more recent year. These are NHS figures.

"In2010 (the yearfor whichthe most recent data is available)women having in vitro fertilisation (IVF) using fresh embryos created with their own fresheggs, the percentage of cycles started that resulted in a live birth (national averages) was:

32.2%for women aged under 35
27.7%for women aged between 35–37
20.8% for women aged between 38–39
13.6%for women aged between 40–42
5.0%for women aged between 43–44
1.9% for women aged45 and over"

There were 25,571 NHS funded IVF cycles in 2013. Does anyone seriously believe there are 20,000 children in the UK available for adoption?!!

On the 30th September, there were 3,470 waiting children - ie. children who had had an order granted, called a placement order, which allows children's services to find an adoptive family and place the child with them. And that number is every child, from the youngest to the eldest, children with no known medical conditions to those with multiple or profound disabilities, single children and sibling groups of 3 or 4, children with many emotional disabilities and children with much less significant emotional issues.

There was a year, I think 1970/71, something like that, where there were 20,000 adoptions carrid out in one year. That was a VERY different time. We will never be in that position again, because society has changed. No more thousands of babies born out of wedlock and their mothers pushed into relinquishing them for adoption because they had no other workable options.

So, if even half of 20,000 women opted for adoption as you suggest OP, which children will they adopt? Some imaginary children perhaps? I doubt even all of the current waiting children would be adopted, because there will be a few whom no prospective parent feels able to parent.

So what, we say - no IVF, and sorry even if you decide on adoption you probably can't do it because there are 10,000 couples/single parents for 4,000 children, so if you are not wealthy, you have to be childless??

Adoption cannot be an option for all these women, it's physically impossible, even if they wanted it, which brings us straight back to IVF being the way forward.

OP, YABU

OP I find your post extremely patronising and the statement that 'if I couldn't have children I'd just adopt' also completely uneducated. Adoption isn't an automatic cure for couples with infertility, not everyone qualifies and it can take years.

Having just been through two years of fertility issues, including a mc, I find this thread upsetting. You've no idea how fertility issues can take over lives. I've not had ivf but I had tests for fertility etc. it's not as black and white as in your post.

Treating cancer is of course extremely important, along with so many diseases. But YABVU to be so flippant about infertility and it's importance on health in the overall picture. Lucky you to have not had fertility issues.

Congratulations! You get my first ever on MN!

YABVVVVU.

why pick on infertility? You clearly have no idea the pain it causes.

I wasn't eligible btw. £25k later and DD is here.

You've made me cry in the middle of the night.

YABU

Consider acting/voting in such a way that the NHS budget is increased, so both IVF and cancer treatments can be afforded. Not scrapping in a hugely cruel and undignified way over who "deserves" to be saved/helped.

Things we could do to ensure that:

• Spend less on nuclear weapons
• Enforce taxes more fully, especially corporation tax
• Stop military meddling in other countries
• Make companies who make a profit whilst paying people at a level where they need tax credits to survive repay those tax credits before they can post profits/dividends, thus ending taxpayer subsidy of low wages and private profits
• Introduce increased levels of stamp duty on an increasing sliding scale for people who buy 2+ properties

Just don't buy blindly into a culture of "resources are so scarce we need to fight one another like battery chickens pecking each others eyes out for the few scraps left". Divide and Rule is the first trick in politics. Don't fall for it.

I very much agree Rosy!

OP, my comment about how it wasn't unfair that only the rich could afford IVF wasn't a general 'life is unfair' comment - I meant that the implications of a society where only the rich could have IVF were troubling (though I can see that I didn't make that very clear). You mention various other things where the rich have an advantage (housing, education, jobs, longevity), and that's all true. But at least everyone in the country has the opportunity for housing, education, jobs. There is a difference between 'you get the cheapest version of this because you don't have the money to have other options' and 'you don't have the money so you don't get this at all'.

I would also like to state that yes I do have compassion for cancer patients who've had funding for drugs withdrawn - you can care about both things. And if my dad had had the chance to have his life prolonged by three months by a drug the NHS wouldn't fund, I'd be furious and heartbroken. But would my dad have wanted this drug at the expense of my fertility treatment? I don't know - he might have done

You've said that as well as fertility treatment, you wouldn't fund unnecessary cosmetic surgery on gastric band ops on the NHS. Do you think that would provide enough funding to improve all cancer treatments for all patients?

And the reason so many people were able to adopt 40 years ago was that single mothers were forced to give their children up for adoption. That's not a world I'd like to go back to. I must admit I am surprised at the low number of children available for adoption now.

If it wasn't for nhs funding I wouldn't be sat in hospital after years of heartache staring at my new baby right now.

The vast majority of children available for adoption have had extremely difficult starts to their lives which can have a profound affect on them. It is not the same as having bio children, it is certainly not an easy solution for infertility: the priority is to find the right homes for the children involved, not children for infertile couples.

The vast majority of expenditure on healthcare in an individual's life happens in the year before they die. There are huge questions as to whether treatment at this stage is always in their best interests: in terms of side effects, realistic chance of benefit, etc. Anyone truly interested should read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. To bring it down to a personal level, I think that if at 80 I was offered a treatment which gave me a reasonable chance of another 3 months life in reasonable health I would probably turn it turn in favour of treatment that had a reasonable chance of giving me a granddaughter or great-granddaughter. But that's me, it is very personal, & maybe If I get that far I'll think differently.

I shouldn't keep rising to Annadina's outstanding level of ignorance & offensiveness but do you realise that you could extrapolate your argument to cancer treatment (types of which have substantial proven genetic components, unlike infertility.) Perhaps if we don't treat cancer in the young they won't reproduce and we would have less cancer? Natural selection & entirely morally correct, right??

ah got too emotional to proof read. Apologies.

By granddaughter I meant of course grandchild.

Second para should read the vast majority of healthcare in Most People's lives happens in the year before they die. Obviously this is not the case for everyone.

It was me who said if you couldn't afford IVF how could you afford children. And I stand by that. I DID not say you have to prove it by having 5k in the bank.

A child will cost thousands to raise feed educate etc over its lifetime, if you can't afford the cost of a couple of rounds of ivf then yes, I think you should consider if you can afford a child. Answer me this- Young couple, both long term unemployed, no prospects- should they be given IVF? Adding another mouth for the government to feed? Or just middle class people who because they don't have children, are better off financially anyway? If you're both working and struggling to pay bills, what makes you think it's easier when you're down to one wage or childcare costs and another mouth to feed?

Shona I just wanted to point out that there's a big difference between being able to find a large chunk of money at one point in time to pay for ivf and being able to find the day to day costs of raising a child on a monthly salary.

I can feed/clothe care for a child on a monthly basis on my salary no problem but I don't have thousands in the bank I could draw on to pay out for ivf if needed.

Happily

It was me who said if you couldn't afford IVF how could you afford children. And I stand by that.

If you are going to apply that to couples who experience infertility, it should also be applied to those who have no issues conceiving. I wonder what the response would be to that?

Shona I just wanted to point out that there's a big difference between being able to find a large chunk of money at one point in time to pay for ivf and being able to find the day to day costs of raising a child on a monthly salary.

^Very true LaLaLaaaa

IS that going to be the new adoption criteria I wonder - you have to have £5,000 in the bank to be considered to adopt?

I'd love to adopt, my dh is type 1 diabetic and apparently that's a problem - not unless he's a wildly uncontrolled diabetic it isn't - who on earth told you that>

And there are big hurdles to cross to adopt - because the majority of children have already suffered enough for one lifetime and even the process of adoption itself in the absence of any other issues is tough.

Imagine one morning you woke up to find yourself in a strange bed in a house you don't know with a man you've never seen before who is smiling at you and talking as if he knows you and as if you being there was marvelous. All the food they have in the house is totally different to what you're used to and you seem to be talking a different language as you can't get across to them how scared you are.

Imagine that then imagine it happening several times in the space of a few years and then imagine it happening to your child of say 2 yrs old.

The hurdles are there for a reason - if you can't get over the hurdles you really aren't resilient enough to adopt.

I would like to suggest an alternative method of NHS rationing.

Fertile couples on the birth of their first child could be advised that whilst their first round of maternity care is free subsequent maternity care for additional children will have to be paid for. Couples unwilling or unable to pay would be given the option of continued contraception or obviously they could "just adopt".

After all, why should the tax funded NHS fund the luxury lifestyle choices of fertile couples when these resources could be better spent on those with life threatening or life limiting illnesses? How selfish.

AIBU?