A woman is suing her health trust after she was forced to conceive using a donated egg because of delays in her treatment. Greta Mason went into labour to give birth to a child conceived using a donor, her husband Chris said. Mrs Mason says she will bond with her baby regardless of the fact it was conceived using another woman's eggs. But she is suing Worthing and Southlands Primary Care Trust claiming unnecessary fertility tests led to a six-year wait for treatment, meaning her own eggs were too old to use.
Fertility clinics are to receive guidance aimed at cutting the rate of multiple pregnancies. The British Fertility Society and Association of Clinical Embryologists recommends transferring only one embryo per IVF cycle wherever possible.
A widow is battling to use sperm taken from the body of her dead husband, in a British legal first. The woman, who cannot be named, wants to use sperm taken from her husband after he died unexpectedly during a routine hospital operation last year. The mother-of-one applied for an emergency court order allowing his sperm to be taken shortly after he died and it is now being stored in a clinic. The law allows sperm only to be used with the written consent of the donor.
BBC Radio 4's Law in Action will be broadcast on Friday 15 October, 2004 at 1600 GMT. Abortion law is under close scrutiny, after it was revealed that an NHS-funded charity is helping women to get illegal late abortions abroad.
The first British baby genetically-selected to be free of a breast cancer gene has been born. She grew from an embryo screened to ensure it did not contain the faulty BRCA 1 gene, which passes the risk of breast cancer down generations.
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service says the lack of abortion services for women who are 20-24 weeks pregnant is a scandal. The charity is the UK's largest abortion provider, and carries out 80% of terminations after 20 weeks.
A UK charity has insisted it is not breaking the law by referring women abroad for late abortions. The Sunday Telegraph has reported that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service helps set up hundreds of late abortions without medical justification. BPAS says not referring patients abroad would be "morally reprehensible".
A judge is to be asked to institute criminal proceedings against the Spanish clinic which was exposed as carrying out illegal late abortions on hundreds of British babies. A denuncias - the Spanish term for an accusation of criminal activity - will this week be laid against the Ginemedex clinic in Barcelona, citing the extensive video and audio evidence collected by this newspaper, proving that it is flouting abortion laws. The judge will decide whether to order a full police investigation into the scandal, which was uncovered when staff at the clinic agreed to carry out an abortion on an undercover reporter who was 26 weeks, or almost six months, pregnant, even though both she and the baby were healthy.
A leading British provider of abortions did not break the law when it told women who wanted late terminations about a clinic in Spain that would perform them, a report by Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer for England, concluded last week. Professor Donaldson investigated the charity the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) after a newspaper reported that it was illegally referring women to Spain for abortions after 24 weeks’ gestation, the limit in Britain for abortions for "social" reasons. Professor Donaldson has decided that BPAS did not break the law by telling women about the Spanish clinic. But he criticised it for giving out the clinic’s telephone number too readily and for not giving appropriate advice to women seeking a late abortion.
A lesbian couple have won the right to NHS treatment to help them have a baby after threatening to sue health chiefs. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC) had denied Caroline Harris and Julie McMullan IVF treatment as they were not classified as an infertile couple. The health board said it had reviewed its position in light of regulations, including the Equality Act. The women, who were suing the health board for treatment costs, said they had not yet been offered a settlement. The couple were claiming £20,000 after unsuccessful private fertility treatment, which followed them being refused NHS help. They had taken their case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh and a judicial review of the decision was due to take place at a later date. The health board at first stood by its refusal, but it has now agreed to offer the couple treatment at an assisted conception unit.
Drawn by payments of up to $10,000, an increasing number of women are offering to sell their eggs at U.S. fertility clinics as a way to make money amid the financial crisis.
A couple have spoken of their shock after an IVF clinic mix-up led to their last embryo being wrongly implanted into another patient. They were further angered when it emerged the other woman was given the morning-after pill. The couple from Bridgend won their case for damages after the mistake at Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales. Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust apologised "unreservedly" for the error and said it had improved checking procedures. The trust admitted gross failures in care and has also agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement to the couple.
A LESBIAN couple have won the right to IVF on the NHS after a legal tussle, ahead of laws that will put same-sex patients on an equal footing with heterosexuals. The couple, who remain anonymous, had to go through a legal fight to push the NHS to fund IVF because, at the moment, individual trusts decide whether they wish to pay for treatment for lesbians. The couple were initially refused IVF by their primary care trust because they were of the same sex. One of the women had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which disrupts ovulation, and is one of the most common causes of infertility. From October, clinics will no longer be able to block lesbians by referring to a child’s “need for a father”. Instead, same-sex couples will need to demonstrate only that they can offer “supportive parenting”.
It is three years since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority reviewed its guidelines for sperm, egg and embryo donation in the appropriately acronymed SEED report. But reproductive medicine has moved on so swiftly that Professor Lisa Jardine, who took over last April as the authority’s chairman, believes that it is time to return to the issue. In an interview with The Times she called for a fresh debate on two of the most controversial aspects of donation. First on her agenda is the question of when family members should be allowed to donate to one another. She is concerned about intergenerational donation, such as in two cases in 2007. In one, a Briton aged 72 provided sperm to his daughter-in-law, while in the other a Canadian, Melanie Boivin, froze eggs for her daughter, Flavie, 7, who has Turner syndrome and will become infertile.
A longstanding ban on selling sperm and eggs should be reconsidered to address a national shortage of donors, the head of the Government’s fertility watchdog says. Payments to donors could cut the number of childless couples travelling abroad for treatment, Lisa Jardine, of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, told The Times.
More than 80% of NHS primary care trusts in England fail to offer the recommended three free cycles of IVF to infertile couples, an MP has claimed. The Department of Health says 30% of PCTs provide three cycles of the fertilisation treatment. But Tory MP Grant Shapps, who has contacted every PCT, says these figures are out of date. A "postcode lottery" operates, with rules on age, relationships and other children varying widely, he insists. In some cases women who would be deemed too old for treatment by one PCT would be seen as too young by another.
A couple have spoken of their utter devastation after a fertility clinic mix-up led to their last viable embryo being implanted into another woman. Debra and Paul, from Bridgend, have received damages of about £25,000 after the error in December 2007.
Fertilising eggs from the wrong sperm donor is a nightmare scenario for IVF clinics, which came to light in the case of a white woman in Leeds who found herself giving birth to black twins in 2002. But The Report's Nadene Ghouri has since found a routine neglect of safeguards to prevent such mix-ups at a major London hospital led one embryologist to turn whistle-blower.