Aggregated News
Reflecting on her imminent departure as head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the body that regulates IVF and fertility services, Lisa Jardine said in an interview last week that “nobody wants to run stories about the people who go through IVF for nothing.” She’s right.
There’s a paucity of stories about couples that have been through the IVF treadmill and still remain childless (or fertility treatments that don’t work for most). Hardly anyone bears witness to the spiralling cost of IVF treatment and the enormous sacrifices that couples are prepared to make. When did you last see a TV medical documentary that showed the gruelling failed treatments that cost thousands, and coupled with debt from having to remortgage? Or a final haunting shot of a beautifully decorated but uninhabited child’s nursery?
Instead, as Jardine said: “The stories are always exciting. The stories about multiple births are always about beautiful babies.” These stories often go hand-in-hand with has been described as a “cycle of hype”. Headline after headline promise hope, which also parades “success rates that the industry...
There’s a paucity of stories about couples that have been through the IVF treadmill and still remain childless (or fertility treatments that don’t work for most). Hardly anyone bears witness to the spiralling cost of IVF treatment and the enormous sacrifices that couples are prepared to make. When did you last see a TV medical documentary that showed the gruelling failed treatments that cost thousands, and coupled with debt from having to remortgage? Or a final haunting shot of a beautifully decorated but uninhabited child’s nursery?
Instead, as Jardine said: “The stories are always exciting. The stories about multiple births are always about beautiful babies.” These stories often go hand-in-hand with has been described as a “cycle of hype”. Headline after headline promise hope, which also parades “success rates that the industry...