Women are risking their lives to have babies by in vitro fertilisation

London: Women are risking death and bankruptcy in their desperation to become mothers, according to Professor Sammy Lee, one of the country's leading experts on infertility.

Some couples going through fertility treatment are driven by an urge "stronger than addiction and more powerful than obsession", said Lee, who pioneered egg donation in the UK when he was chief scientist of the IVF programme at Wellington Hospital, London.

"The quest to have children can become a vortex that gets faster and faster and sucks people in. Women will sell everything and anything to have the treatment if they are short of funds. They will risk their lives, there's no doubt about it," said Lee, who will discuss the issue on Friday when he chairs a major conference, Motherhood in the 21st Century, at University College, London.

"I have treated young women with cancer who have refused to have treatment for their illness until they have got pregnant and given birth, knowing they are risking their lives," added Lee, who has helped some couples through 12 cycles of IVF. The maximum number of treatments provided on the NHS is three.

"Some of these women do, indeed, go on to die [from the cancer], but they die happy, feeling that they have achieved something greater than their own continued existence."

He admitted that the determination of couples to have children can lead to clinicians continuing treatment when they know there is little chance of success.

"Everyone involved in these scenarios is trying to do the right thing, but the extraordinary energy of a couple's determination creates a vicious circle.

"The advances of science seem to promise women everlasting hope, which means they put ever more trust and hope in the doctors.

"Clinicians, such as myself, should refuse to treat these couples because further treatment is highly unlikely to work, but after helping that couple through three IVF attempts, you can get too pulled in to insist that enough is enough. This is how couples become implicit in their own abuse.

"Even if you do tell them you will no longer help them, they often just go and get treatment across the street," Lee added.

"Then when they get too old to be treated in this country, they go abroad. That makes them vulnerable to yet more abuse, although again, it is abuse in which they are complicit.