Australia: A compassionate call on IVF

Children are one of life's most precious gifts; no parent could put a price on them. Most intending parents at first assume they will be blessed with children, but one in six couples has difficulties in conceiving. Medical advances have enabled some of these couples to have children, but IVF treatment comes at a cost, personal and financial, and success is not guaranteed. Even so, IVF gives couples who long to have children a second chance.

Both government and public understood the significance of this, hence Australia's generous IVF funding. Unsurprisingly, given the numbers of women who delay motherhood - often oblivious to how rapidly fertility falls with age - demand for IVF has grown. The Government's costs jumped from $50 million in 2003 to $79 million last year, when it proposed to set age limits and cap the number of funded IVF cycles. IVF, a tiny part of a $42 billion health budget, was singled out for an austerity campaign.

Since March, Health Minister Tony Abbott has sat on a report that said IVF is not appropriate for older women; the success rate past the age of 44 was less than 2 per cent. Yet when it released the report on Wednesday, the Government relented: funding would remain unrestricted and would be extended to another treatment for male infertility. This is a compassionate decision.

Not all women have a choice about delaying motherhood, for reasons that range from infertility and difficulty in finding the right partner to financial and career insecurity (a more family-friendly society might reduce the need for IVF). An education campaign on age and infertility also makes sense - preventive programs to alert people to potential problems tend to be highly cost-effective. There may be arguments to be had about allocating health resources, but IVF is a special case: nothing is more precious to most Australians than having children.

Single women in Britain can now get fertility treatment

LONDON: Single women and lesbians in the UK will soon be entitled to have fertility treatment like their married or heterosexual counterparts.

Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, is going to propose a change in the law so that women can get IVF treatment without having to fulfil a legal requirement that the child has a father figure.

The present law demands that doctors take account of the role of the father in the child’s life before offering fertility treatment to women, either on the National Health Service or in private practice.

However doctors, politicians and gay rights groups believe this view is too old fashioned. Family units have now changed to include single mums or lesbian partners they claim. The new proposals, which are to be outlined in the Queen’s speech next week, aim to fill the current law’s lacunae and go against the government’s equality bill.

Ministers believe the present obligation to consider a child’s need for a father contradicts the equality bill that outlaws the refusal to provide goods or services on grounds of sexual orientation. It also goes against the Human Rights Act, which sets out an individual’s right to a family life and freedom from discrimination.

“The dropping of this discriminatory and unnecessary provision is long overdue,” said Dr Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP and a member of the Commons and science and technology committee.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the body that regulates fertility treatment has welcomed the proposal.

However, The Sunday Times reported that family campaigners are expected to oppose the revision of the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

“The current act merely says that the need for a father should be taken into account. To eliminate even this token gesture towards the role of the father is an example of gender correctness at its most ridiculous and discriminates against men,” said Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

Having trouble getting pregnant? Book a 'procreation vacation'

MIAMI ---- When Lucinda Hughes heard she would have to drink sea moss elixir while vacationing in the Bahamas, she was certain it would make her sick. Sure enough, three months later, Hughes is very sick ---- every morning ---- and expecting her first baby in April.

She got pregnant after she and her husband went on a three-day Procreation Vacation at a resort on Grand Bahama Island.

It's part of a trend in which hotels around the world are luring couples who are trying to have a baby. Resorts are offering on-site sex doctors, romantic advice and exotic food and drink calculated to put lovers in the mood and hasten the pitter-patter of little feet.

Even some obstetricians are promoting the trend. Dr. Jason James of Miami said he often encourages couples trying to have a baby to sneak away for a few days, and he often sees it work.

"One of the most easy, therapeutic interventions is to recommend a vacation," James said. "I think the effect of stress on our physiology is truly underestimated."

Hughes and her husband, Kemry, went to the Westin at Our Lucaya Grand Bahama Island, where the three-night Procreation Vacation starts at $1,893. They lounged on the beach, swam in the pool, sipped pumpkin soup and enjoyed couple's massages. Hughes and her husband were also served an age-old Caribbean fertility concoction three times a day: sea moss, the Caribbean's version of Viagra, mixed with evaporated milk, sugar and spices. (She said it tasted like an almond smoothie.)

The chain also offers the package at their resorts on St. John and Puerto Rico.

"My husband and I thought that we would go on the vacation and learn all these nice fertility secrets and we'd be practicing them for a number of months for them to work," said Hughes, 35, who conceived the day she got back from the trip. "We were stunned. There's definitely some truths to the foods and the elixirs."

The couple had been trying for only two months, since their wedding in May. But like most couples they have hectic schedules in Washington, where she is a freelance writer and he is a city employee. Cell phones are always ringing, day planners are jammed. "We're all overscheduled," Hughes said.

But the couple let go in the tranquil Bahamas and made time for luxuries often skipped at home, such as romantic dinners and cuddling, she said.

The Birds and the Bees package at the Five Gables Inn & Spa on Maryland's Chesapeake Bay includes a two-night stay with a couple's massage, oysters (purported to be an aphrodisiac) and wine, a pair of heart-print boxer shorts and a CD from love crooner Barry White for about $810 per couple.

There is a Procreation Ski Vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where couples can snuggle by a toasty fire, enjoy a candlelit dinner for two in their room and take a dogsled trip to a nearby hot springs at the Teton Mountain Lodge.

For about $1,800, couples can book a conception cruise on the "Love Boat." They are taken to a romantic island on the luxury liner of Singapore sex guru Dr. Wei Siang Yu.

At the Miraval Resort in Tucson, Ariz., sex experts Dr. Lana Holstein and her husband, Dr. David Taylor, help couples with such things as ovulation schedules and achieving intimacy.

"The damage that working for conception does to the sexual relationship, it's really, really impactful. This business about being so tense about conceiving a child and feeling like the clock is ticking makes people much more scheduled," said Holstein, author of "Your Long, Erotic Weekend." "They lose sight of the sensual."

She said getting away to spa or a hotel really can aid conception: "It's the relaxation factor. It's that all the other stressors in life are gone."

Now three months into the pregnancy, Lucinda and Kemry Hughes have picked out baby names: Kemry if it's a boy, and if it's a girl, Lucaya, for the resort that made it happen.

Heavy smoking affects the uterus

Heavy smokers are less likely to become pregnant through IVF treatment, even with donated eggs, fertility experts have found.

Smoking more than 10 cigarettes a day, they said, makes the womb less receptive to the embryo and reduces the odds that it will implant and result in a pregnancy.

Smoking has been known to affect a woman's fertility, but Dr. Sergio Soares of the IVI Clinic in Lisbon and his team believe their findings are the first to show heavy smoking has an independent effect on the uterus.

The findings, which are published in the November issue of the journal Human Reproduction, show light smoking did not have any effect on the receptiveness of the uterus to the embryo.