Health – Designer Embryos To Be Allowed In Certain Cases (2004)

Barcode (ID): 02D0508403                                 

Main Search Term and Keywords: Designer Babies, Designer Embryo, IVF

Date of Broadcast: 21st July 2004

Clip Duration: 2 min 14 seconds

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Description: Britain’s fertility watchdog has taken a momentous decision, bringing a little bit of hope to hundreds of families, and to one family in particular. The watchdog decided it would allow parents - in some circumstances - to create designer embryos in order to save sick brothers and sisters. For Joe and Julie Fletcher, that decision is like a prayer answered.

• Fletcher family
• New rules to bring another child to cure their son
• Bone marrow donation from a sibling that is a match as no one in the family is able to help
• Screen embryos via IVF for the match
• Case by case basis – a treatment of last resort
• Will help save the lives of many children
• Broadening the rule may bring problems of designer babies

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Surrogacy (1997)

Barcode (ID): 03B0241418                                           

Main Search Term and Keywords: Surrogacy, IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation, Adoption

Date of Broadcast: 28th January 1997

Clip Duration: 3 min 21 seconds

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Description: A US agent searching for women willing to become surrogate mothers has arrived in Britain. Bill Handel’s clinic in Los Angeles charges up to $30,000 per client. NAT looks at how surrogacy works in the UK.

• 1 in 6 couples cannot have a baby
• How?
• Adoption – UK babies in short supply – only 359 available in 1997
• IVF - not always available on NHS – not always successful
• Surrogacy? – illegal to ‘buy a baby’ however can pay towards a womans expenses
• ‘Straight surrogacy’ – sperm fertilised baby – surrogate mother and biological mother interviewed
• Fuzzy section
• Contract is important to protect surrogate
• Host surrogate – baby carried by another woman

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Fertility – IVF Clinic Blunder (2003)

Barcode (ID): 03D0624430                                                        

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation

Date of Broadcast: 22nd August 2003

Clip Duration: 1 min 41 seconds

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Description: IVF treatment courted more controversy today after another major blunder at a British fertility clinic. For 13 years a young boy had the “wrong” father after someone else’s sperm was used in his mother’s treatment. The boy – who can’t be named for legal reasons – was then forced to fight a lengthy battle in the courts to find out the truth.

• Sperm from wrong man used to fertilise an egg
• Boy of 13 always thought his father was not his father
• Went to court in order to get a DNA test
• Another mix up, white woman gave birth to black twins
• Now tighter regulations to eliminate human error

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Plans For Free IVF Treatment (2003)

Barcode (ID): 03D0624469                                                              

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation, Infertility

Date of Broadcast: 26th August 2003

Clip Duration: 1 min 42 seconds

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Good comparison of views on which treatment is more important – IVF or heart bypass

Description: It may sound good, free IVF treatment for women under 40 who need it. That was the recommendation to the NHS today. But no sooner had it been suggested, than it was under fire for costing too much, and taking money away from crucial areas like cancer care.

• Free IVF treatment on NHS
• Costs – difficult to pin down
• Average of 6 cycles – £2000-4000
• Cost per treatment £12,000
• Total Cost – £320 million
• Compares to heart bypass
• Case study – male agrees it is a matter of life or death heart bypass
• Another thinks creating life through IVF is serious as can lead to suicide

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Health – Government Funding Of IVF Treatment Criticised (2004)

Barcode (ID): 03D0626807                                         

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation

Date of Broadcast: 25th February 2004

Clip Duration: 2 min 28 seconds

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Description: The Government is being accused of going back on its promise to childless couples after an announcement on IVF treatment. The Health Secretary John Reid said that couples would be entitled to just one course of IVF - that’s despite a recommendation from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence that three should be offered. Two years ago Tony Blair said that he’d implement any such recommendations in full but the government says that would be too expensive, at least for now.

• National Institutes for Clinical Excellence recommended couples should get 3 try on IVF
• Health Secretary would only commit to 1 cycle of IVF by next April 2004
• 1 cycle costs £2,700
• Each cycle has 3 stages – given drugs to increase egg production, eggs removed fertilised and then implanted back into womb
• More cycles, more likely it will occur
• Average 1 cycle – 25% chance
• 3 cycles – 75% chance
• Lord Winston thinks it’s a waste only doing 1 cycle
• £85 million = 3 IVF cycles = 10,500 heart bypasses
• Women talking about views
• NHS Trust will not able to afford the treatment and would have to cut funding from elsewhere

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Fertility – Sperm Frozen For 21 Years Makes Baby (2004)

Barcode (ID): 03D0627797                                                   

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation, Infertility

Date of Broadcast: 25th May 2004

Clip Duration: 2 min 5 seconds

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Description: In liquid nitrogen for 21 years. The IVF technique used in his conception wasn’t even invented back then. The boy’s father had his sperm frozen aged just 17 because he was about to undergo treatment for testicular cancer. The case will give hope to many young men about to undergo cancer treatment which could leave them infertile.

• 1979 – fuzzy section – test tube baby began 1978
• 5 sperm samples frozen from a 17-year-old about to undergo cancer treatment
• after 21 years, male married, thawed sperm, after 4 attempts success
• Technique ICSI – explanation with diagram
• Author of Purple Ronnie went under same technique after suffering cancer
• Government says patients are only entitled to one attempt even though took the male 4 attempts

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Health – Fertility Treatment – Special Report (1998)

Barcode (ID): 03B0272628                                                            

Main Search Term and Keywords: Infertility, IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation

Date of Broadcast: 1st October 1998

Clip Duration: 3 min 31 seconds

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Description: The First Guidelines for doctors on who should and should not get infertility treatment on the NHS are about to be published. The Government wants to end the present patently unfair system, of what’s been called ‘treatment by postcode’. A sixth of all couples who want children need medical help. But to have any chance of it, they must live in the right area, and even then, the rules on eligibility vary.

• Twins, test tube babies – 2 of 20,000 babies born via IVF
• Parents outraged to find no help on the NHS
• Struggled to find 2,300 for the fertility treatment – would have sacrificed their home
• IVF on the NHS depends on your postcode – examples Wiltshire
• Doctors complains it makes a mockery of the NHS
• IVF – takes eggs from Mother and sperm from Father mixed in a test tube
• Of 125 health authorities in Britain, less than 80 will help towards the costs of IVF
• Direct result of health problem – marital problem, depression etc
• Example of couple who have tried for 3 years – explain physical pain

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Fertility Treatment – Proposed Changes to Law (2004)

Barcode (ID): 03D0626406                                                         

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation, Infertility, Sperm/Egg Donation

Date of Broadcast: 21st January 2004

Clip Duration: 3 min 1 second

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Description: Children conceived from donated sperm, eggs and embryos are to be given the right to track down their genetic parents. At the moment all donations are anonymous, but from next year the rules will change. It’s part of a wide-ranging review of the Act governing fertility treatment which the government hopes will bring legislation up to date with rapidly changing technology. Until now, women wanting IVF treatment have, officially, needed to be in a relationship with a man to qualify. Under the proposed law changes, that could no longer be a condition. The head of the governing watchdog is worried that the existing rules are driving some women to the internet to find donors.

• 3 year old Ruben Stevenson knows he was born using donated sperm but he will never know his Father
• Do not want a relationship with the donor but would like a knowledge
• Law that a child once 18 years old, will have the right to know their father – the first in 2023
• Baby boom facts – ’73,000 babies born via IVF, 25,000 Donor conceptions, 200 sperm donors, 1,100 egg donors – possible sperm shortage?’
• Losing anonymity may affect number of sperm donors – even though it is already small (200 as of 2004)
• Update to Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act – needs to be modernised
• Diane Blood – had to go to court and abroad to use her dead husbands sperm
• Controversial issues such as cloning for discussion later

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Medical – Human Egg Donation (1998)

Barcode (ID): 03B0546669                                  

Main Search Term and Keywords: Egg Donation, IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation

Date of Broadcast: 24th July 1998

Clip Duration: 4 min 4 seconds

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Description: There is still a shortage of donors for women who do not have any. Channel 4 News looks at possible solutions to the problem and the ethics of providing free fertility treatment to women who donate eggs.

• Celebrating 20 years of IVF
• Doctor – by sharing eggs reducing the infertile woman chances at having a child as you are sharing her eggs
• Thousands of women need donated eggs but many are not lucky
• Waiting list of 200 women at one hospital with only 4 donors
• Scheme set up – exchanged her eggs in order to have IVF treatment rather than an exchange of money
• Strong fertility drugs increase number of eggs created
• Many are against scheme on ethical grounds
• Some believe that it is unfair for a woman to give away her eggs to others who then become pregnant and the donor does not – unfair
• Authorites believe it should not be continued

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France – Fertility Controversy (2001)

Barcode (ID): 06D0618084                                                 

Main Search Term and Keywords: IVF, In Vitro Fertilisation

Date of Broadcast: 22nd June 2001

Clip Duration: 1 min 37 seconds

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Description: The doctor who treated a brother and sister so that they could have a test tube baby revealed today he had not done any background checks on the pair. Dr Vicken Sahakian, who performed the in vitro fertilisation treatment (IVF) at a Los Angeles clinic, said he would not have carried it out if he had known the woman was 62 years old or that the couple were not husband and wife, as they claimed. The birth of a baby boy – following the use of the brother’s sperm to fertilise a donor egg which was then implanted in the sister’s body – provoked a storm of protest yesterday

• Brother provided sperm to a surrogate and then to his sister.
• Birth of twins
• Authorities are to decide whether it is against the law
• Fuzzy section
• Doctor was led to believe their were husband and wife
• Worry over ethics and the pschyological effect on the twins when they are older

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