Panorama investigates IVF….

Did you watch the recent Panorama programme on IVF treatment? If not I strongly recommend that you do (you can watch it on BBC iplayer). The programme found that Nearly all costly add-on treatments offered by UK fertility clinics to increase the chance of a birth through IVF are not supported by high-quality evidence proving that they work.

Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the centre and who led the team, was shocked and told Panorama: “It was one of the worst examples I’ve ever seen in healthcare.”

Patients the BBC spoke to had tried many of these add-ons in their desperation to have a baby, spending tens of thousands of pounds in the process.

Jessica Hepburn spent over £70,000 on eleven cycles of IVF and had many different “add-ons”. She never had a baby. She now campaigns for patients to receive better information about fertility issues.

At the heart of the debate is whether patients should be charged large sums of money for treatments that have not been demonstrated to improve their chances of having a baby.

To read the article in full click here.