istration of fertility drugs. This has been both to control the timing of ovulation and to increase the number of eggs produced. The more eggs, the logic goes, the higher the chance of a successful pregnancy.

Once harvested, the eggs are fertilised in the lab while the woman receives hormone drugs to ready her womb for implantation. It is then hoped a normal pregnancy will ensue. But see what happened to Lee Cowden, aching to conceive and who was pumped full of hormones to make her produce more eggs. The result? A trip to hospital but not to a maternity suite.

"I was 25 and felt this excruciating pain in my chest," recalls Lee, a music therapist from Surrey. "I was rushed into intensive care in an ambulance, and it became pretty clear that, despite my age, I had suffered a heart attack. "I'd suffered a clot caused by the fertility treatment I had undergone. I remember lying in my hospital bed, desperately worried. Not for my health, but because I thought that theyd never let me have IVF again, and I'd never become a mother." With relatively small provision of IVF on the NHS, the fertility business has developed into a multi-million-pound industry charging up to 5,000 for a single cycle.

With all parties desperate for results, the tendency has been to use more drugs to produce more eggs and hopefully more babies. But critics claim this approach has resulted in increased risks to the mother (cancers, clots and hyperstimulation) and to the unborn child, as well as an explosion in multiple births. Today, the twin birth rate is 23.6 per cent for IVF mothers, compared with between one per cent and two per cent in the general population. Not only are they more likely to be born prematurely and underweight, but there is also a greater risk that they will be stillborn or with a disability. Rules governing IVF mean that women under 40 in Britain can have two embryos implanted, while those over 40 are allowed three.
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