The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), in conjunction with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), has released draft industry guidance to ensure that the British IVF industry is more transparent about treatment, including its cost and actual rate of success.
Last February, the CMA stated that it was investigating the fertility industry in relation to its lack of transparency with consumers. Working together with the HFEA, the CMA’s draft guidance stipulates that IVF clinics should provide patients with accurate information regarding true treatment cost and success rates.
The guidance, currently in draft form, is now in its consultation phase, until January 2021, and is due to be published in March.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “IVF, as the CMA guidance attests to, is ultimately an industry that exploits the heartbreak of couples unable to conceive naturally. IVF prolongs that pain for profit.
“What so often goes unsaid is that only 20% of IVF cycles in Britain lead to a live birth – an 80% failure rate.
“But it remains to be seen whether the CMA guidance will require that clinics also reveal the human price tag of IVF – the number of embryos lost through IVF – 174,622 embryos in 2017 alone in the UK.
“We should never forget the terrible irony of IVF, that it robs the individual human embryo of its value and dignity through the fertility industry’s ethic of expendability without which IVF cannot operate as a business, which is what it ultimately is.”
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