IVF AND THE UNHEALTHY NHS -

The Stirrer's blog for Wednesday

30-008-2006

Of course severely overweight women should be denied fertility treatment on the NHS says The Stirrer…and so should everyone else.....

I mean, how did we get into this mess in the first place?

The Health Service was set-up in the wake of World War two to mend our broken legs, cure our coughs, soothe our aches and pains.

It was doing pretty well too - within a couple of generations killer diseases had been conquered and as the length of our lives improved so did its quality too.

Britain, once full of the sick men and women of Europe, became a healthy nation and treatment free at the point of delivery became the international gold standard.

And then, when we weren't looking, the NHS morphed into something else.

No longer satisfied with simply being the nation's on-demand, 24 hour medicine cabinet - a passive provider from cradle to grave - it became a kind of nosy neighbour snooping on its citizens' behaviour, forever exhorting us to change our “lifestyle” - not a servant of the people anymore, but their master.

"Work out, stay in, drink up, calm down" it barked - although there were trade-offs for allowing this busybody upstart to assume so much control of our lives.

Those who didn't like what they saw in the mirror could plead “psychological damage” and have a nose job paid for by the rest of us.

Those who didn't fancy bringing up an otherwise healthy child with a cleft palate could have their foetus neatly “terminated”.

And those who proclaimed their “right” to be parents could demand their statutory three cycles of IVF.

Now don't get me wrong.

Looking seriously ugly to the point of deformity, bringing up a child with a disability, or being denied the chance have kids at all are all conditions worthy of sympathy - in some cases even pity.

But we know now - if we didn't realise it before - that the NHS simply can't deal with every eventuality - it can't make life perfect and whole for everyone.

There's an argument that it shouldn't even try, yet here it is caught up in a pharmaceutical arms race, forever trying to second guess the latest medical advances, always putting its hands in our pockets, routinely failing to satisfy our ever expanding expectations.

Maybe it's time to acknowledge some harsh, possibly unpalatable truths.

Your “psychologically necessary” plastic surgery is my hernia operation.

Your “medically justified” termination is my old man's hip replacement.

And your fertility treatment is my mom's cancer drug.

One answer of course is to increase NHS spending so that these awful dilemmas are eliminated.

But you know as well as I do, that they never will be.

This government has poured money into the health service like no government before - and yet, like some sozzled pisshead in search of his next can of “Special Brew” - it shtill wantsh more (hic!)

We can allow it to carry on like this for a bit longer if we want, pretending that all is well - until it finally collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions or has a heart attack brought on a state of sclerotic obesity.

Or we can take a knife to it now and do what's necessary.

It's kill or cure.