Infertility is simply not an illness we can cure

Jun 18 2009 By Maureen Messent

STRANGE, isn’t it, how a so-called “tragedy” (which is merely a sooner or later error) can be somehow reassuring?

In those godless laboratories up and down the country, anonymous and white-coated scientists strive to beat and improve Mother Nature, to override all things natural.

Millions of pounds are spent every year to push boundaries, to improve our lives – yet it takes one utterly human error to underline our impertinences and presumptions.

A Cardiff couple, we learn this week, produced a son through IVF treatment a couple of years ago. Despite their being not endowed with natural fertility, they wanted another child. “Gimme, gimme, gimme” was their cry and they had lined-up frozen eggs in an embryo-freezing unit.

Their hopes were high. After all, they thought, science was on their side to make all things possible.

At which stage an overworked junior doctor made an all-too-human error, proving that nature has the last word.

She implanted our couple’s last embryo in the wrong womb. The recipient demanded a termination. Collapse of Cardiff couple, whose second parenthood had ended in failure.

I can almost understand their chagrin but I find myself rooting for Mother Nature. Don’t we sometimes require our arrogance to be slapped down to remind us that fate, nature, kismet, call it what you will, has a penchant for denying certain wishes?

And the sooner would-be parents learn that children are gifts, not rights, the better for all concerned. Resources should be spent researching illnesses of all kind. Infertility is not an illness.

Why can’t couples live with it?