Women’s ‘indignity’ as IVF bypasses men

WOMEN are unfairly paying the price for men’s falling fertility, scientists have warned. Men’s sperm counts have reduced by more than 50 per cent worldwide since the Seventies, with chemicals in the environment, steroids, protein shakes and even tight underwear all blamed for the downturn.

But a widely used form of IVF which involves injecting a sperm directly into an egg, before implanting it into the mother, is now being used regularly to “bypass” male infertility.

Scientists warned that the treatment infringes “the basic human rights and dignity of women” because they are forced to undergo invasive procedures to harvest their eggs and then implant an embryo, even though they themselves are not infertile.

The use of ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) has soared, and in 2014 it accounted for more than half of all assisted fertility treatments in the UK.

Prof Richard Sharpe, from the Medical Research Council Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh, said ICSI was a crude method of bypassing a problem. He said: “The treatments, and they’re quite invasive, are to the female partner.

“So the female is having to bear the burden of the male’s sub-fertility.” In an article in the journal Human Reproduction, Prof Sharpe added: “Maybe women undergoing treatment during ICSI can begin to apply pressure at the point of delivery of treatment, asking, ‘Why can’t you treat him rather than me?’”