Fertility becomes big business as NHS cuts back on treatment
By Sarah Boseley,
The Guardian (UK)
| 11. 06. 2010
[United Kingdom]
Nicosia looks nice. The clinic website shows pictures of boats bobbing on blue-green Cypriot waters. Spain feels more familiar, but the Ukraine is cheaper. Or what about Mexico, where you can choose whether to have a boy or a girl?
The fertility business is global and booming. As the NHS cuts back on free treatment for the childless, lumping IVF with tattoo removal as an act of kindness rather than treatment for a disease, the competitive prices of private clinics overseas compared with their UK rivals will look ever more tempting. This weekend a number of them will be touting for business at the Fertility Show, now in its second year, at London's Olympia.
Their websites are in English, their blandishments are soothing and the success rates they advertise are eye-popping to those unversed in the complexities of such data. You can get an instant email quote (in sterling) – I was offered IVF using donor eggs (difficult to obtain in the UK) in Kiev for £5,277, in Nicosia for £3,945 (including six days in a hotel and airport transfer)...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
Sir Francis Galton, 1890s, by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant)
npg.org
Public Domain via Wikipedia
As has been discussed in recent issues of Biopolitical Times (1, 2), there are, increasingly, companies that claim to be selling parents better babies by selecting the “best” embryos. These services don’t come cheap – think $50,000, or even more, for embryo testing, plus perhaps as much again for IVF and concomitant services. To most of us, that is extremely expensive...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Marianne Lamers, NEMO Kennislink [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.23.2025
Een rijtje gespreide vulva’s gaapt de bezoeker aan. Zó ziet een bevalling eruit, en zó een baarmoeder met foetus. Een zwangerschap, maar dan zonder zwangere vrouw, gestript van zorgen, gêne en pijn. De zwangerschapsmodellen en oefenbekkens, te zien in de...
