CRACKDOWN ON THE IVF COWBOYS

After Mail exposed clinics exploiting desperate women...

THE FERTILITY watchdog last night launched a major crackdown on clinics exposed by the Daily Mail for exploiting desperate women.

It censured doctors after our undercover reporters revealed that financial incentives were being used to entice women into giving away their eggs.

One clinic has been banned from offering ‘egg sharing’ – a scheme giving women free or discounted treatment if they agree to donate half their healthy eggs.

Reporters had discovered that the clinic was targeting couples on low incomes and telling them never to put in writing that they were donating for financial reasons alone. They were also offered rip-off high interest loans to fund treatment.

The fertility watchdog emphatically endorsed the Mail’s findings, adding: ‘The allegation the centre is “exploiting desperate women on low incomes”, is accurate.’

Other clinics were reprimanded for giving desperate women false hope by exaggerating their success rates with frozen eggs. The regulator said doctors were selling expensive egg-freezing treatments to women using information that had no statistical validity and was misleading.

One was accused of ‘ promoting egg freezing to enable patients to preserve their fertility, without fully explaining the limitations’.

The crackdown comes after the Mail published a damning investigation into the fertility industry in May. The revelations led IVF pioneer Lord Winston to declare: ‘I fear that some in my profession have no moral or ethical compass.’ Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the findings were serious and worrying.

Distraught women contacted the Mail to say they were exploited by egg-sharing schemes and were haunted by the idea of other parents bringing up their children. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority launched a major investigation, which reported back yesterday.

Increasing numbers of women have had to go private for IVF because of NHS cuts. Whereas health boards in Scotland fund three cycles, the same is true of only 16 per cent of trusts in England and Wales – down from 24 per cent three years ago.

Undercover reporters from the Mail Investigations Unit visited fertility centres posing as wouldbe parents who could not afford treatment. They found clinics routinely offering egg sharing – where women who have healthy eggs but cannot get pregnant receive free or treatment if they agree to donate. They keep half the healthy eggs that are collected for their own IVF, while the rest are used for another woman’s treatment. The clinics charge other infertile couples as much as £7,500 a time for the donated eggs.

At the London Women’s Clinic in Darlington, Safwat Ashour told reporters that those who shared eggs usually did so for the financial rewards. The IVF consultant added: ‘You shouldn’t put this in writing. If you make it clear that it is for financial reasons, you will not be accepted.’

When he was asked why the clinic offered discounted treatment for eggs, he replied: ‘The eggs we are going to take are going to bring to us over £6,000. So we are making good profit.’

On its website, the centre advertised egg sharing as a ‘low- cost packages’ option and told potential patients that they might be interested if their ‘minds are on the recent recession and the impact of NHS cutbacks’. The HFEA yesterday announced that the Darlington clinic would have a condition put on its licence banning egg sharing until improvements were made.

Its report added: ‘The centre is promoting egg donation as a scheme to enable patients to afford their fertility treatment, potentially to its financial benefit. The centre places an emphasis on financial incentive rather than altruism.’

It was also found that patients were not told they could buy IVF drugs from pharmacies, potendiscounted tially saving them money. There were ‘limited’ concerns about the safety of patients, gametes or embryos. Inspectors noted that Dr Ashour had apologised, the clinic took on no egg sharers in 2017 and it no longer offered high interest loans.

In yesterday’s reports, the HFEA also said it would monitor clinic websites to sure they were not exploiting poor women or making unfounded claims about success.

It will also now work with financial authorities to reduce the risk of patients being exploited by high interest loans.

Dr Raj Mathur, of St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, said: ‘This is a field where patients are vulnerable and NHS funding is limited. We have to be very careful in how we offer patients treatment choices.’

‘No moral or ethical compass’ EXPLOITED BY CASH-FOR-EGGS IVF CLINICS From the Mail: May 2 Rip-off loans leave IVF women crippled by debt for years May 2 Victims’ fury over egg-share scheme after Mail expose May 3

MANY will struggle to believe they heard Len McCluskey correctly. Can it really be true that, in supporting illegal strikes, the thuggish Unite leader likened himself to Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi?

Yes, Mandela broke the law. But it was law made by an apartheid regime in which South Africa’s vast black majority had no say. Similarly, Gandhi’s peaceful protest was against a colonial power that denied millions a meaningful vote.

Could the contrast be any starker between those gentle champions of democracy and Mr McCluskey, with his bellicose contempt for the law in democratic Britain?

Indeed, it is profoundly chilling that in Jeremy Corbyn, we now have an Opposition leader who refuses to defend the rule of law – for centuries our shield against tyranny – and a Shadow Chancellor who has openly advocated ‘insurrection’.

Despite the constraints of the debt crisis, Theresa May is doing all she can to relax the squeeze on public sector pay. If Unite’s members want a decent future for their families in a free Britain, they will reject the hard-Left’s call to anarchy. ONCE the pin-up boy of the old Left, that unreconstructed class warrior MP Dennis Skinner is the target of Corbynites’ vicious abuse after standing up for his constituents by backing the Brexit Bill. What a revealing cameo of the deeply nasty party Labour has become. IN another victory for a Mail investigation, watchdogs have launched a major crackdown on IVF doctors who exploit desperate women by taking their eggs in return for fertility treatment. This paper is proud of its role in curbing these profiteers from misery.