Uri Verlinsky, who presented the results of tissue-typing embryos to match them to existing siblings, was lambasted by an audience of fertility experts. As usual, in designer baby stories, the scaremongering was misdirected. The brave new world, for now at least, is far less pernicious than the bad old one. We are indeed on a slippery slope, but its gradient is decreed not by progress but by lack of it. Postcode rationing means that Norfolk funds treatment for 400 patients a year, while neighbouring Cambridgeshire pays only in exceptional cases.
Some authorities provide no treatment at all.
Others demand that prospective parents must be youthful, slim, non-smokers with no living child from any previous relationship. In Italy and Australia, IVF is unlimited and free. In Britain, as Lord Winston has complained, there are 'fewer IVF treatment cycles than under the Tories'. Two years after Tessa Jowell, as Health Minister, promised an end to the current lottery, many couples are preparing to appeal for treatment under the Human Rights Act. The issue here is not the selfish dreams of a minority loath to accept their childless fate.