Celebrities and IVF

The private life of celebrities has always been an area of great interest to the average person , which is why they hog so much of the limelight. Their life is tracked with great interest, and anything which happens to them gets splashed all over the media. This is why whenever a celebrity does IVF , this is often front-page news . Readers and TV channel viewers want to know all the gory details. Why did they need IVF ? did they use donor eggs ? or a surrogate ?

Reporters have to do a lot of digging to get at the truth – and this has consequences - some of which are good , and some of which are not. The details of the celebrity’s personal medical problems become the staple of cocktail party gossip – and there’s lots of exaggeration and distortion. I'm sure most celebrities would rather keep this part of their life private. However, given the fact that they have chosen to be a celeb, this is one of the trade-offs they accept - the sacrifice of their privacy . What happens in their lives seems to be pretty much grist for all mills – and it all gets rehashed many times.

One of the advantages is that there is a lot more public awareness about IVF and the medical illnesses which it can be used to treat successfully. The acceptability of a lot of these procedures in society ( which originally were considered to be taboo topics ) increases considerably . Thanks to the media coverage and publicity which these stories generate, a lot of people believe that if a celeb can do surrogacy, so can I ! They start exploring this option , as result of which there are many more patients who start asking for these procedures. While increased awareness is always good , because patients are much more aware about what can be done to help them solve their problems , the downside is that that there are lots of inappropriate requests for these procedures , so that even patients who don’t need such expensive and complex treatment start clamouring for them.

This is partly a result of the poor quality of reporting in the press . because it's not possible to provide enough medical background in these stories. Also, many reporters feel that because readers are not interested in the medical facts, they often provide only skimpy medical background.

However, thanks to these celebrities, a lot of these, topics have now become mainstream , so that it makes it much easier for IVF doctors to discuss some of these treatment options with patients because there's been so much coverage of them ? And, another side effect is that a lot of IVF doctors who treat celebrities become celebrities in their own right !