IVF - an immensely valuable feat

The headline news given lately to the future of assisted reproduction in Malta seemed to stop there. There was little reaction from columnists or letter writers. There have been, to my knowledge, few if any editorials. The Church came out with a long statement against and some newspapers had headlines which I hope were unduly alarmist.

While The Times softened the bishops' words with the headline "Bishops call for law on assisted reproduction", Malta Today reported with the headline "In vitro babies may be history".

My initial appeal to MPs who are discussing this in their Social Affairs Committee would be to leave well alone. It is true there will be no major or large scale public outcry against this, certainly not in newspapers. Couples who experience infertility don't go and shout about it from the rooftops.

But then again very very many couples in Malta have been helped to have children using this technology. They know, as only they and their doctors know, that infertility kills and that while there has to be some regulation in this area, one can never draft a law that would be useable in years or even a year to come.

In all areas of medicine, but in this one particularly, there is advancement and improvement all the time. Any law which would make it impossible for the doctors in this area to use that technology for the benefit of their patients would be a serious mistake.

It is also worth being proud of the fact that this tiny rock of an island actually provides a very good assisted reproduction service. Our success rates are as good as most of the better centres of excellence in this area, and this isn't an achievement we should just take for granted. Much of it you can now obtain at St Luke's.

Initially, here and abroad, this technology was only available to those who could afford it, but this has changed. Important too, that the success rate in Malta with this treatment is very good indeed. It is improving steadily, and it is important and imperative that the specialists in this area be allowed to properly practise what is in essence a branch of medicine.

Can you imagine any other specialists, say heart surgeons, being bound by a law, as the bishops want to happen here? It would essentially stop the surgery. And sadly, that is what the Church seems to want in the area of infertility treatment. To stop it in its current form. If you read what they wrote in detail you understand that for them the crime is bigger if an egg is fertilised and then left and stored, rather than if a couple face a lifetime of infertility.

I agree with some of their caution, though. They talk about certain tests on embryos (which is not allowed, and is one area we could control), and their worry about the non-marrieds having children. But as far as I know, the doctors who carry out this work in Malta do so very responsibly and I have not heard of abuse of any form.

And let's be practical. Most of the people having children out of marriage in Malta are doing so either because they are young and irresponsible (as kids naturally or invariably are!), or because there are reasons for which they cannot marry their partner and they have children anyway.

There is no issue at all of people having children out of marriage because of infertility treatments and this red herring should be dropped immediately. Infertility is not something you joke around with or play with. It is a sickness. It kills women who endure no pregnancies or endless miscarriages, or men who also suffer as badly, and we should welcome the medicine that has helped so many so well.

I was also surprised that the Committee on Social Affairs heard from a lot of experts but not from any patients. Parliamentarians, who after all represent the people first and foremost, should also make it their business to understand the perspective of infertile parents too.

However convincing the bouncy Professor Brincat is, you only have to speak to a handful of the hundreds him and his team have helped to have children to get a very different perspective on this area. However, this may just be because of confidentiality, and I hope MPs make it their business to inform themselves much better on this area from a constituent's point of view, before they go and jump on too many moral high grounds.

Fertility rates in Malta are dropping alarmingly. And here it's not mainly because of people starting families much later. Most couples start families below the age of 30. Infertility is growing among men too, and for many of these couples IVF has been a lifeline. In fact Professor Brincat did tell the Committee that Malta's high infertility rate and low birth rate, which is down in Gozo by 50 per cent over 15 years and in Malta by 33 per cent "meant that many families needed advanced technology to be able to have children".

And after all, if the bishops do have their way here they are only going to make the low income infertile family stop receiving treatment. Others will just go abroad and pay for this treatment, which only 10 years ago was what many did anyway, as there was no local or even free service.

Now Maltese people have their treatment here and most of it for free. In fact Rev. Professor Serracino Inglott called this an injustice. What happens in layman's terms is that St Luke's carries out most of the fertility procedure but then the implantation in the womb happens privately because - and I quote The Times - "the government prohibits the full procedure in public hospitals because it deems it immoral while allowing it in private hospitals".

IVF has changed and improved the lives of many many hundreds if not thousands of families in Malta, now and in the future.

Let's hope it has a future. If the Church has its way, only the rich can get this service by paying for it abroad. The poor will have to remain childless.

It's the same with divorce. As long as it is not introduced in Malta, it's the poor who have no choice because the rich can always sort these problems out elsewhere. Do the poor have a voice? And which political party is going to speak up for poor infertile couples?