Question: IVF: Do you agree with IVF because I don't. My Auntie had cancer and couldn't have children and she would prefer to have had money spent on cancer research NOT IVF! So what do you think??? I have a pretty good reason I think??? What is your opinion???

Claire O'Donnell answered on 19 Jun 2010:

HI Lizzib, I’m sorry to hear your auntie was ill. I guess she’s quite young and I hope she’s getting better with the treatment. You’ve asked a really good question and it’s one that people like Jo and I have to deal with all the time. This will be quite a long answer because there’s quite a bit to explain but I hope you find it interesting. I think there are two parts to your question but if I’m wrong please let me know and I’ll try again. Firstly, sadly your auntie couldn’t have children and I’m guessing that it was because of the cancer or the treatment. She’s had to get used to that which must have been very hard for her. Quite understandably she might feel that other people who can’t have children should get used to it too like she’s had to rather than use up the NHS money on IVF. You’ve heard that Vicki is doing research on how to help people like your auntie. She’s trying to find a way to keep women’s ovaries away from the harmful drugs that are used to fight cancer so that the woman can use her ovaries again after she’s been treated. What do you think your auntie would think about that sort of research? Do you think she might think that was ok so that in future people like her might be able to have children after they get over their treatment?
Now the bit about cancer research. Importantly, no one is right or wrong but I’ll try to explain why things are the way they are in the NHS.
First off clearly it is a reasonable point of view to say that the NHS should spend money on people who are already alive and ill rather than trying to help other people have children. Cancer is a dreadful disease and despite our best efforts, it still kills people. Research is usually aimed at finding treatments that slow down the growth of the cancer, in some cases it can be cured. Now I’m sure everyone would agree that research that produces a drug that cures people is well worth it. The trouble is that not many of the drugs do that. Lots and lots of them slow down the cancer a lot, others slow it a bit but can’t stop it and others slow it down a bit but don’t really make a difference beyond keeping you alive for a few weeks or a couple of months and feeling pretty sick throughout all that time. Big drug cmpanies spend a lot of money every year trying to develop new treatments. Try thinking about this though – we know that there are reasons that people can’t have babies and we know that there are treatments that will mean that about half of the people who are treated will have a baby. You could say that they’ve been cured in one sense. So do you think that the NHS should stop spending money on a treatment that works fairly well and ‘cures’ someone? Remember that the NHS is paid for by all of us through our taxes so I guess that the people who are finding it hard to have a baby might feel that it was a bit unfair if the NHS refused to give them a treatment for their health problem when it treated other people.
Now obviously, not being able to have a baby and dying of cancer aren’t the same thing but it’s not really a question of that. Most people can have their cancer treated successfully and more and more people are describing cancer as a disease that you live with like diabetes or asthma. As well as that remember that the NHS only funds about 30% of all the IVF that happens in the country, the rest is people paying for themselves – this means that even if you took all the money away from IVF you’d need to find more from somewhere else if it was going to be enough to make a difference to the amount of cancer research. We do have ways of deciding whether something is worth the NHS using it’s money on and in that way we try to be as fair as we can to everyone.
One of the difficulties is that you can’t be sure how the research will turn out, it might produce something important or it might’nt. In real life we generally try to do something for as many people as we can. This means that there is IVF treatment on the NHS but only for a few people, far fewer that could have it. In lots of places you have to have no children before to get NHS treatment, if you’ve never had children but your partner has then you can’t have NHS treatment, if you’re overweight the treatments are less effective so you can’t have IVF if you’re very overweight. The same is true for smoking so in some places you can’t have IVF if you smoke. Treatments don’t work so well on older women (see Greg’s profile for why) so you can’t have IVF treatment if you’re over 40. You can only have one or two treatments in most places, in about 25% of the country you only get one chance. So you see that out of the people who might want to have IVF, the NHS doesn’t treat that many.
You’re right you do have a good reason for your opinion. You ask me for mine- well I think that the amount of money that we spend on IVF wouldn’t make that much difference to cancer research but for the few people who are eligible for NHS treatment I think it makes a big difference so I’d keep things the way they are. While we don’t have enough money in the NHS to do everything though, I do think we should restrict IVF to people who really need it most and are most likely to have a baby from the treatment..
Sorry to go on for so long but I hope it helps to explain why the NHS does what it does. I bet the others managed to explain in far fewer words.
I hope your auntie gets well 🙂