IVF clinics corrupt and greedy Winston claims
Britain's leading fertility expert condemned the IVF industry yesterday, saying that it had been corrupted by money and that doctors were exploiting women who were desperate to get pregnant who were failed by the NHS.
Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival, Robert Winston also accused the fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, of failing to protect women and giving consistently poor information to couples.
"One of the major problems facing us in healthcare is that IVF has become a massive commercial industry," he said. "It's very easy to exploit people by the fact that they're desperate and you've got the technology which they want, which may not work."
Lord Winston, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, was particularly critical of doctors in the capital: "Amazing sums of money are being made through IVF. It is really rather depressing to consider that some IVF treatments in London are charged at 10 times the fee that is charged in Melbourne, where there is excellent medicine, where IVF is just as successful, where they have comparable salaries.
"So one has to ask oneself what has happened. What has happened, of course, is that money is corrupting this whole technology."
There are 85 licensed fertility clinics in the UK, in an industry worth up to £500m a year. According to latest figures from the HFEA, in 2004 more than 30,000 patients underwent more than 40,000 treatment cycles, each costing up to £8,000.
Lord Winston expressed particular concern over some of the tests being offered to infertile couples.
One screening technique which uses fluorescent markers to stain defective parts of an embryo's chromosomes, and costs several thousands of pounds, is routinely used to weed out unviable embryos. But even the most advanced version of the test can only interrogate a tiny portion of an embryo's genome. "That's being sold to patients at £2,000 a time and they're saying, your chromosomes are fine, that embryo should be transferred, when actually it's a lie," Lord Winston said. "There's no knowledge about the genome from that."
He added that there was no clinical justification in doing the screening "and yet hundreds of women are being exploited out of their desperation to get pregnant from people who are taking large sums of money from them in private clinics.
"Much of it is in ignorance because most of the people who are doing this work are doing a form of cookery without understanding the science behind it. It's knowingly done, insofar as the clinicians and scientists doing it don't actually want to explore the implications, because they're not engaging with the public, they're not accountable, they're being arrogant and making a lot of money."
Lord Winston also went on to criticise the HFEA for failing to protect women: "The regulatory authority has done a consistently bad job. It's not prevented the exploitation of women, it's not put out very good information to couples, it's not limited the number of unscientific treatments people have access to, it doesn't prevent sex selection and all sorts of other things people don't like because there are all sorts of ways around the law."
A HFEA spokesman said: "No procedure throughout medicine goes into mass use without some sort of leap of faith. Patients just need to be informed that something is on a preliminary stage and if you want to go down that route then do so, but you're fully informed before you do so.
From:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,2091791,00.html
The privatisation of the NHS is encapsulated by the expense that that couples are having to pay for IVF. On April 24, 07 Health Direct posted: NHS free at point of use is a political mirage Doctors warn
A National Health Service largely free at the point of use is becoming a mirage, according to Doctors for Reform, a pressure group that would like the NHS to move from a tax-funded model to a system of social insurance with top up payments. The report shatters the NHS's founding principle that health care should be free for all at the point of delivery.
In some cases patients opt to pay for all their treatment. In others they get investigations undertaken privately and more quickly, before returning to the NHS for treatment.
The result they say is inequitable. But politicians and others are reluctant to engage with the issue. "By perpetuating the political mirage of a service completely free at the point of delivery, debate is conveniently stifled," the doctors say. "What is urgently needed is a proper debate on the future of healthcare funding, covering both tax and independent financing".
"It has to be recognised that the use of top-up payments is increasing. We need to face up to this rather than ignore it."
The doctors published 20 case studies showing how patients used the private sector to upgrade NHS services. They include a 33-year-old secretary who had been trying for four years to become pregnant.
She was eligible for free IVF treatment on the NHS but her primary care trust was in debt and turned her away. She paid £3,500 for treatment at a private London clinic.
Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival, Robert Winston also accused the fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, of failing to protect women and giving consistently poor information to couples.
"One of the major problems facing us in healthcare is that IVF has become a massive commercial industry," he said. "It's very easy to exploit people by the fact that they're desperate and you've got the technology which they want, which may not work."
Lord Winston, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, was particularly critical of doctors in the capital: "Amazing sums of money are being made through IVF. It is really rather depressing to consider that some IVF treatments in London are charged at 10 times the fee that is charged in Melbourne, where there is excellent medicine, where IVF is just as successful, where they have comparable salaries.
"So one has to ask oneself what has happened. What has happened, of course, is that money is corrupting this whole technology."
There are 85 licensed fertility clinics in the UK, in an industry worth up to £500m a year. According to latest figures from the HFEA, in 2004 more than 30,000 patients underwent more than 40,000 treatment cycles, each costing up to £8,000.
Lord Winston expressed particular concern over some of the tests being offered to infertile couples.
One screening technique which uses fluorescent markers to stain defective parts of an embryo's chromosomes, and costs several thousands of pounds, is routinely used to weed out unviable embryos. But even the most advanced version of the test can only interrogate a tiny portion of an embryo's genome. "That's being sold to patients at £2,000 a time and they're saying, your chromosomes are fine, that embryo should be transferred, when actually it's a lie," Lord Winston said. "There's no knowledge about the genome from that."
He added that there was no clinical justification in doing the screening "and yet hundreds of women are being exploited out of their desperation to get pregnant from people who are taking large sums of money from them in private clinics.
"Much of it is in ignorance because most of the people who are doing this work are doing a form of cookery without understanding the science behind it. It's knowingly done, insofar as the clinicians and scientists doing it don't actually want to explore the implications, because they're not engaging with the public, they're not accountable, they're being arrogant and making a lot of money."
Lord Winston also went on to criticise the HFEA for failing to protect women: "The regulatory authority has done a consistently bad job. It's not prevented the exploitation of women, it's not put out very good information to couples, it's not limited the number of unscientific treatments people have access to, it doesn't prevent sex selection and all sorts of other things people don't like because there are all sorts of ways around the law."
A HFEA spokesman said: "No procedure throughout medicine goes into mass use without some sort of leap of faith. Patients just need to be informed that something is on a preliminary stage and if you want to go down that route then do so, but you're fully informed before you do so.
From:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,2091791,00.html
The privatisation of the NHS is encapsulated by the expense that that couples are having to pay for IVF. On April 24, 07 Health Direct posted: NHS free at point of use is a political mirage Doctors warn
A National Health Service largely free at the point of use is becoming a mirage, according to Doctors for Reform, a pressure group that would like the NHS to move from a tax-funded model to a system of social insurance with top up payments. The report shatters the NHS's founding principle that health care should be free for all at the point of delivery.
In some cases patients opt to pay for all their treatment. In others they get investigations undertaken privately and more quickly, before returning to the NHS for treatment.
The result they say is inequitable. But politicians and others are reluctant to engage with the issue. "By perpetuating the political mirage of a service completely free at the point of delivery, debate is conveniently stifled," the doctors say. "What is urgently needed is a proper debate on the future of healthcare funding, covering both tax and independent financing".
"It has to be recognised that the use of top-up payments is increasing. We need to face up to this rather than ignore it."
The doctors published 20 case studies showing how patients used the private sector to upgrade NHS services. They include a 33-year-old secretary who had been trying for four years to become pregnant.
She was eligible for free IVF treatment on the NHS but her primary care trust was in debt and turned her away. She paid £3,500 for treatment at a private London clinic.
Labels: IVF, Lord-Winston, nhs-cash-shortages
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