Call for fertility ban for obese or too thin

[Joolstoo]

On the NHS -
But if you smoke or are gay you're safe

discuss

is it discriminatory or sensible?

DHW, it's not to do with picking perfect people at all.

feel free to shoot me but

I don't think IVF should be available to anyone on the nhs.

The health service is currently overstretched to the extent that it is unable to provide adequate care for the elderly, there are not enough neo natal beds available for premature babies, some life-saving cancer drugs are not available on the nhs due to their cost, and yet IVF costs around £4000 per treatment and only has a 40% success rate at best.

I absolutely empathise with anyone who is unable to conceive a child naturally, having myself been in a situation where it took me some time to conceive my first child, and now in a position where I am unlikely to conceive a second due to dh low sperm count, but I do feel quite strongly that the nhs is there to save existing lives, and while I totally appreciate that the need to have a baby is all-consuming for some people, I do think that we should be putting resources into treating existing people, rather than pumping millions of pounds into IVF treatments which have no guarantee of success.

I am a bit blase because I conceived first time before. However will know in a few weeks if I have been so lucky again. And if not? Then I will really wonder if my weight was an issue.

It's really no different to the way they currently stop the free IVF cycles at 39 is it?

desperateSCOUSEwife - I have no children; I am very overweight; I paid for my IVF; my IVF's all failed; yes I was devastated.

You can't get away from the fact that certian people are difficult to treat succesfully - women over 43, very overweight women certain fertility problems. You need some guideline about who it is efficient to treat and who it isn't. At point would you draw the line?

15 stone, 20 stone, 25 stone, 30 stone? Obviously you have to draw it somewhere. This report was actually about standardising guidelines acrosee the country. All health authorities have their own guidelines already - some you'd currently be lucky to IVF at all or at most one cycle and definitely not if you're overweight.

interestingly though, i wonder what the situation is if there is an obvious reason why you cant become pregnant, ie blocked tubes, then being overweight is not preventing you from becoming pregnant...there is also the possibility that a medical condition has casused you to become overweight and its that condition which is preventing you from becoming pregnant.

soupy it sounds like that to me

as for ivf treatment
yes it should be available
medical condition isnt it

as for nhs resources/ so bloody what
we pay our taxes and our forefathers
they want to stop paying all the pencil pushers and just get on with their jobs
and that is nursing care/ preventative medicine/
and diagnosing patients and treating them promptly

its the same - doesn't matter if your weight gain is caused by pcos which also caused your infertility, if your BMI is too high they won;t treat you.

sue that must of been so very hard
I cannot put myself in your shoes in all honesty as I have not been there

yes I do understand re drawing the line

but everyone at least deserves that chance albeit slim
whatever size they are imo

sue-see i dont beleive that is right, if you had pcos..losing weight is extremely difficult..and its that condition which is stopping you from becoming pregnant.

If you're going to argue that the NHS should only cover essential or life threatening conditions then there's a massive list of things the NHS do that costs many millions of pounds more than our pathetic infertility provision in this country. Fertility treatment in this country doesn;t come to the foothills of the costs for treating the effects of weight, drugs, smoking, sporting accidents, abortions etc.

Presumably these will all be funded privately as well then?

SpaceCadet - I understand you think that is not right (of course I would agree with you ) but 'tis true none the less. Take my word for it.

but if you have a medical condition that is preventing you from becoming pregnant and that medical condition was treated, then statistically you would still be less likely to fall pregnant if you were overweight. So your weight would still be an issue.

no sue, i think they should pay for everything
as we have paid into the system

smoking and being gay having some equivalence in your head then jools?

what are they both then? undesirable lifestyle choices?

give me strength.

its fat-ist

and skinny ist

its interesting that I'm the only very overweight person on here who has been refused treatment on the NHS, paid privately, still failed and that I don't have an issue with this policy!

i havent read the whole of this thread, but did read the article this mroning. jools you beat me to this.
it says they suggest authorities should beless stringent than they are, but more consistent.

a bmi of 36 is very very high. its not fatist at all, no one is suggesting fat peoople cant have kids, what is being suggested is they sort their health out first.
would you offer ivf to someone with cancer? not unless it was in remission. a bmi of36 is sky high.

Message withdrawn

"can deny the right of someone having a child "

Sorry but no-one has the right to a child. If the restriction is about health issues potentially affecting the outcome of the IVF or of the pregnancy itself I have no problem with it. What matters most is the outcome for any potential child isn't it?

and wannabe - yes I do agree with you, although my CPOS causes the weight gain and the infertility (I have very bad pcos and so am completely infertile), but the issue is that IVF has low success rate for me and therefore the "efficient use of resources" argument still holds.

Also it isn't impossible to lose weight with PCOS just bloody difficult but by the itme it was apparent I needed IVF, I didn't have the luxury of enough time to lose enough weight to be under BMI of 34 (which was my HA's limit)

Stopping the free treatment at 39 is ageist. If it's wrong to discriminate agains those with weight issues, it's wrong to discriminate against those who are "old".

So, I am curious...
DHW, would you agree with paying for a heart transplant for a smoker? Or would you be in favour of giving a new heart to someone that has a fatal disease and will likely die in 6 months?
Are you in favour of giving unlimited IVF to a 60 year old?

Because this is the point of this policy....

Is not about a judgement of people, is about whether the treatment will work or not... and how to make a rational decision of where to draw the line.

sorry that should have said clinically obese people, not fat people. big difference