§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their working estimate of the number of couples in this country where (a) the woman and (b) the man suffers from reproductive problems requiring fertility treatment; whose is the estimate, and how is "infertility" defined.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege)Estimates of the extent and definition of subfertility vary because of the difficulty in collecting comprehensive data. Research quoted inEffective Health Care—The Management of Subfertility suggests that after one year between 80–90 per cent. of couples attempting to conceive are successful, rising to approximately 95 per cent. after two years. Copies are available in the Library.
§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
What long-term monitoring is being carried out, and what studies conducted, and by whom, of children born in Britain as a result of various fertility treatments, and what conclusions can so far be drawn; and
What long-term monitoring is being carried out, and what studies conducted, and by whom, of women who have undergone various fertility treatments in Britain, and what conclusions can so far be drawn.
§ Baroness CumberlegeStudies known to the Department of Health are as follows:
The summary of The Report of the Medical Research Council Working Party on Children Conceived by IVF by Pat Doyle and Valerie Beral, was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 1990, 300: 1229–33). The study showed that the numbers of malformations found 40WA were consistent with the range of expected values in national data on congenital malformations. A copy is available in the Library.
A study comparing the family relationships of children aged about seven and born as a result of donor insemination or in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) by normal means or adopted, was published in December in the 1993 Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology 14 (Special Issue) Quality of Parenting in Families Created by the New Reproductive Technologies: A Brief Report of Preliminary Findings (S. Golombok, R. Cook, A. Bish and C. Murray). The conclusion was that "the quality of parenting in families with a child conceived by assisted conception is superior to that shown by families with a naturally conceived child". A copy of the journal will be placed in the Library.
From 1988 the Interim Licensing Authority, and its successor the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) have kept registers of IVF treatment including records of developmental defects in babies conceived as a result of treatment.