Pope denouncing IVF treatment

I'd love to see people justify this.

RichieC wrote: »

The more progressive we get the louder and more bellicose the denunciations from this dinosaur organisation will become.

That's hardly fair! At least dinosaurs had the decency to evolve into birds.

robindch wrote: »

Perhaps we should rename A+A "The K-T Boundary".

That's Cretaceous with a capital C! :mad:

iguana wrote: »

To be fair, while I don't have a moral problem with IVF, he (or most likely his scientists) has actually made some good points. IVF is an incredibly expensive treatment, it's painful and invasive, it has very low success rates and it doesn't actually fix the problem, just circumvents it, so if you want another child you have to go back to IVF.

In fairness, you can say that about a lot of medical procedures. It's also may not be possible to 'fix' the problem, so circumventing it is some people's only option.

iguana wrote: »

It can also be incredibly tough emotionally and feel like a miscarriage when it doesn't work out because the couple know that for at least a few days the mother was carrying their potential child/children and a failure that cycles means that potential child/children died. Which is much tougher emotionally than just not conceiving.

I don't know if I'd agree with that. I've seen members of my family go through hell trying to conceive naturally; every month comes another betrayal from your body. At least IVF gives you a chance.

A lot of people here talking about something they don't seem to have any direct experience of. A bit like what they are criticising Ratzinger for, in fact.

phutyle wrote: »

FertilityCare and NaProTechnology don't treat the causes of fertility problems either. They're basically the same as the rhythm method of contraception, but used in reverse: tracking the signs of ovulation to try to predict the optimum time to try to conceive naturally. That might be enough for many people who just have a hard time conceiving, but it is completely useless in many circumstances that IVF is required for.

That's actually just a very small part of what Napro is. The tracking of the cervical fluid is done much more intensely than a backwards rhythm method. The mucus is noted each day using 124 codes, not including the 20 different ones for menstruation. After a number of months the pattern made by the codes are used as a diagnostic tool by which numerous fertility problems can be identified and treated.

Napro makes extensive use of medication at very precise doses depending on the pattern of the cervical mucus. CM charting is also very good at diagnosing conditions like endometriosis, which can usually only be diagnosed through laparoscopy (keyhole surgery). I have endometriosis and it's an extremely daunting process to have to go through diagnostic surgery when nobody has much of an idea whether anything will be achieved or not by it. My gynaecologist actually said to me the day I was booked in; 'How do you feel like going through an invasive surgery tomorrow that may or may not yield any results?'

Under standard HSE questions asked I was an unlikely candidate for endo, which is a genetic illness, as no-one in my family has suffered from it. And other factors like the age my period started are the exact opposite to most endo sufferers. No-one could explain to me why I had it, I was just told that nobody knows enough about the illness yet. Then 6 weeks later after one session in a Napro clinic, I knew exactly why I was prone to the disease (due to evidence of a link between endo and an inner ear disease my father has) and could see how for the last 3-4 years my menstrual patterns had been growing more and more synonymous with those of other endo suffers. And was put on a medication which could help stave off the inevitable recurrence, help me get pregnant and reduce my chances of another miscarriage.

Sure CM charting seems stupid in an era of fertility monitors and monthly TV
scans for follicle tracking, but that's not the purpose of the charts. I mean actually think about it. Do you honestly think that couples who are failing to get pregnant month after month haven't exhausted all options to tell them when they are ovulating? You can buy a years worth of testing sticks for about €20. Nobody is going to go to a fertility treatment where all they will learn is what they have known for the last year anyway.:rolleyes:

phutyle wrote: »

If a man is unable to produce sufficient sperm due to injury, chemotherapy or some other physical factor, no amount of trying to figure out the best time of the month is going to help him make anyone pregnant.

Napro only claims very limited success in being able to improve sperm issues. There are some medications and supplements, like black maca, which can improve sperm count, motility and dna fragmentation. In fact to the best of my knowledge Napro are one of only 2 fertility clinics in this country who even bother to test for sperm DNA fragmentation, despite numerous recent studies showing that up to half of cases previously unexplained infertility are down to DNA fragmentation.

phutyle wrote: »

IVF is mostly used by people who have spent years trying, and trying and trying, with no success. Mont after month of checking the thickness of mucus, temperature fluctuations, ovulation kits. Completely taking the "sexy" out of sex. It's pretty much a last resort. It's expensive - not necessarily because it's profitable, but because of the cost of medications, technology and expertise needed to do it. And, here in Ireland, it's not covered by any health insurance or the HSE. So people that need it have to pay out of their own pockets (apart from the medications, which luckily are covered by the Drugs Payment Scheme - otherwise the costs would be astronomical).

You are talking here about Ireland, which isn't the rest of the world. In the States, for example, it's actually extremely common to go straight to IVF, IUI or ICSI without ever doing many of the more routine investigations done here, or even trying a few months on Clomiphene, Gonadotropins or Bromocriptinel. And in the US there is very much a 'for profit' reason for this.

phutyle wrote: »

The Pope has condemned the arrogance of IVF. Yet it's a process that involves huge sacrifice, pain, fear, loss, despair, and ultimately some amount of hope - and all with the single aim to create a little life to love and cherish. You would think that these things would be perfectly compatible with what we keep being told are Christian values.

But no, the thought that people are willing to put them selves trough so much to overcome the odds and challenges thrown at them without relying on his brand of mumbo jumbo is too much for him. As usual, it's the Pope, and the people that think like him, that are the truly arrogant ones here.

That's not what it is at all. The Roman Catholic church is opposed to IVF due to the destruction of embryos. It always has been. It's the exact same place they come from when they oppose abortion. I don't agree with that stance, IVF has a definite place in fertility treatment, I know numerous people who have gone through it with both good and bad outcomes. I'd use it if I felt out of options even though I'm not sure there would be any point to it as I can conceive. But lets not get hysterical about problems with IVF that the church does not have. They have no problem with couples doing everything in their power to have children as long as they don't risk the deliberate destruction of embryos.

Gurgle wrote: »

Careful now, embryos deemed to be non-viable are destroyed.
Not the same thing at all.

That depends on what jurisdiction you are in. In the US they are willing to implant all the healthy embryos. In Canada the law is very strict that it doesn't matter how many good embryos are created, only 2 can be implanted. Any others may be frozen but are more routinely destroyed. I'm not sure about the situation in Europe but nobody I know who has had IVF has ever had more than two embryos implanted. I don't know if that's because of national law, hospital policy or because they didn't manage to create any more healthy embryos than 2.

kylith wrote: »

In fairness, you can say that about a lot of medical procedures. It's also may not be possible to 'fix' the problem, so circumventing it is some people's only option.

Yes but you shouldn't jump to circumvention before attempting to fix it first. IVF is a fantastic option when it's necessary but using it before it's necessary can be like using a jackhammer to nail in a picture.

kylith wrote: »

I don't know if I'd agree with that. I've seen members of my family go through hell trying to conceive naturally; every month comes another betrayal from your body. At least IVF gives you a chance.

Having gone through month after month of not conceiving, 3 chemical pregnancies, a miscarriage and currently experiencing the fear of early pregnancy with my history, I can say categorically that as utterly hellish as it is to be unable to conceive, it doesn't compare for one tiny second to losing a pregnancy. And the chemical pregnancies (which is where the embryo doesn't succeed at implanting - very similar to failed IVF) while incomparable to actual miscarriage are worse than not conceiving, though at least they didn't cost me €5 grand each.

And while IVF gives you a chance, it's not a very good chance statistically as it's less than 20%. (Though it is higher if the sperm is taken directly from the testicles.) My uncle and his wife went through 7 or 8 rounds of IVF without success and that was much, much harder on them than the previous years of trying. It also meant they now have a mortgage on a house they previously owned outright, in part for the IVF and in other part for the €40k+ it cost to adopt two children from Russia. (If anything should be being condemned for being a money making racket that takes advantage of the infertile, it's the foreign adoption agencies.)

On the other hand my sister-in-law was having early menopause and as a result moved to IVF quite quickly as her options were so limited, she had just one round and is expecting twins in the early summer. IVF can be a fantastic thing and it's very sad if there are people who need it, who will listen to the pope's condemnation of it and not use it, even if they need it. Though I doubt there will be many, tbh, as the drive to have children is a damn sight stronger in most people who have problems conceiving than all but the most fervent of religious beliefs. What there will be is a fair number of morons condemning people for having IVF, even within their own family, because the pope says it's bad. But there are people who think like that anyway due to utterly non-religious reasons as I've read and heard comments from people along the lines that fertility problems are a sign that evolution doesn't want you, or that it's arrogant to go through all of 'that' to have a baby when there are so many needy children in the world.

vicwatson wrote: »

Sure wasn't the last pope as bad really, I think it's inherent in the name "pope" to be honest. They just spout.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I think JP was a little quieter on making big declarations about evil this and that, but maybe I'm wrong.

I think the reason why Ratzy appears so bad is because a lot of us grew up with JP and as Irish society diverged from Catholic doctrine, people recognised that JP was behind the times, but then he was old and doddery. It was no more shocking than your grandad talking about how gays were evil - as shure it's grand, he's old and set in his ways.

When JP left then, I think a lot of people expected a slightly more progressive pope for a more progressive time, but instead they appointed someone arguably more conservative than before, driving the wedge between the Irish and Catholicism even further.

It also doesn't help that Ratzy looks evil. At least JP had the smiling old man thing going on. Ratzy looks like a school headmaster from a Roald Dahl book.

That's because Wojtyła is way harder to remember than RatMan.

Sometimes the church can make it very hard to be a catholic and with statements like this I have to say they are their own worst enemy

seamus wrote: »

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I think JP was a little quieter on making big declarations about evil this and that, but maybe I'm wrong.

I think the reason why Ratzy appears so bad is because a lot of us grew up with JP and as Irish society diverged from Catholic doctrine, people recognised that JP was behind the times, but then he was old and doddery. It was no more shocking than your grandad talking about how gays were evil - as shure it's grand, he's old and set in his ways.

When JP left then, I think a lot of people expected a slightly more progressive pope for a more progressive time, but instead they appointed someone arguably more conservative than before, driving the wedge between the Irish and Catholicism even further.

It also doesn't help that Ratzy looks evil. At least JP had the smiling old man thing going on. Ratzy looks like a school headmaster from a Roald Dahl book.

but I think JP was a little quieter on making big declarations about evil this and that, but maybe I'm wrong.

No you're are correct - but remember that old and doddery man was presiding over the requests for information on Child Abuse in this country and basically told the Irish to go and F**k off.

Ratz from the flatz looks very eveil though