Dr. John Waterstone:

There was a question about how we avoid the commercialisation of IVF. I am afraid the cat is out of the bag. IVF has become commercialised. It is becoming almost embarrassing for me to work in this area. I started off working in the National Health Service, NHS, in London with some of the pioneers of IVF. Gynaecologists who were interested in fertility were drawn towards that area because it was new and exciting. Now, IVF has been bought up by big money. In Ireland today, of the nine IVF labs in this country, only my unit in Cork and Professor Wingfield's unit in Dublin remain owned and operated by Irish people, the people who set up those units. Everybody else is employed by big business. That is something we have to bear in mind. The cat is out of the bag. The question is not how do we avoid it, it is here. The question is how we control it and protect patients against it.