Irish Examiner view: Perfect is the enemy of good
Melanie Dineen's late husband Dylan Fleming provided written consent for her to use his frozen sperm to conceive their child after his death. Picture: Dan Linehan
In the hyperfast, inter-connected, 2020s you might imagine that the timelag between medical advances and their recognition in the laws and conventions of society is shortening. But much of the evidence is to the contrary.
No more poignant example exists than the case reported by the of the Macroom woman Melanie Dineen, whose late husband Dylan Fleming provided written consent for her to use his frozen sperm to conceive their child after his death.
Dylan died in March at the age of 32. The couple had wanted a baby and medical opinion received before his death advised that IVF was the best option for Melanie.
However, Ms Dineen cannot proceed through the public system using the samples, because there is no protocol in place to cover such a scenario, a situation correctly described in the Seanad by Sinn Féin senator Nicole Ryan as “heartbreaking and unjust.”
Marian Harkin, minister for the wide-ranging portfolio of further and higher education, research, innovation and science, said that the case involved “highly sensitive and complex factors” which “need to be fully teased out, resolved and a firm decision agreed upon.”
True enough, but this does not explain why Ireland, a wealthy country with progressive ideals and values, is a consistent back-marker when it comes to making and implementing timely decisions in the health arena.
Many countries — the United States, the UK, Australia, Japan, Czech Republic, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, already have legislation in place allowing posthumous IVF with certain caveats.
Soldiers in Ukraine are offered semen cryopreservation free of charge.
There is no shortage of precedent and small print relating to this subject.
Ireland’s policies are unfinished business from the past two decades and are viewed as “outdated and bureaucratic” by fertility experts.
Posthumous assisted human reproduction through the private system is included under an umbrella of legislation signed into law last July but which has not yet been implemented.
It will not include publicly-funded posthumous reproduction.
It is 20 years since legislation was first mooted.
Back in October 2017, on Simon Harris’s watch as health minister he was extolling the requirements of a regulatory authority.
It was “essential”, he said, to successful implementation “given the complexity of the issues involved in regulating this area and the rapidly evolving nature of AHR and research technologies.”
Last month the Department of Health advertised for membership of the regulatory authority’s board while another health minister, Jennifer Carroll-McNeill, the fifth of the past 15 years, said she could not “give a definitive timeline for the commencement of the legislation at this time.”
Granted, medical science is complicated and some of its advances have been astonishing and can challenge many long-held beliefs and principles.
The new legislation calls for oversight of surrogacy, gamete and embryo storage, research, genetic testing and posthumous assisted human reproduction in the private system.
But in considering its rules Ireland must beware the dangers inherent in that old aphorism that “best is the enemy of good.”
It will be 47 years next month since Louise Brown became the world’s first IVF baby delivered by a planned C-section.
It is 40 years since Kim Cotton became the UK’s first commercial surrogate mother.
The world’s surrogacy market is projected to reach over €75bn by 2030.
Doctors at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital have just completed the first customised gene editing treatment, searching for one mutation among 3m lines of DNA, to cure a rare disorder in a nine-month-old baby boy.
In a country which is awash with lawyers it cannot be beyond our wit to draft protocols more quickly.
Otherwise, Irish citizens and parents will continue to suffer from an all too common feature of health provision — that of always being one beat behind the band.
You don’t have to look far in half-term or on bank holidays or during the summer to find a hot topic which exercises most parents — the price of flying away for a family break.
Some reports estimate that costs have doubled, and sometimes trebled, during the past 25 years, with Rory Boland, travel editor of consumer service Which?, describing the rise in holiday fares as a “rip-off”.
“Airlines may like to call it dynamic pricing or surge pricing,” he said.
“But if you’re trying to take a trip during the school holidays, you’ll almost certainly call it what it is — a rip-off.”
Meanwhile, on the Mumsnet social media platform, an Irish contributor points to a headmaster complaining about people taking their children out of school during term time to avoid punitive air fares.
In “his days”, he said, having a holiday simply meant being sent to stay with relatives.
Others point to the benefits of a staycation, although in our case, that can sometimes prove to be more costly than the Costas.
Times and expectations have, of course, changed. Ireland is notably more liberal in these matters than other jurisdictions eschewing fines and legal sanctions.
But what seems clear is that while the summer months have traditionally been predictably expensive for sun-seeking families, that burden is now in place for all the main holidays.
Bargain prices are part of a calendar lottery.
Industry experts point to a number of factors — attempts to recover the debts that airlines incurred during the pandemic; increased jet fuel prices following Russia’s war in Ukraine; labour shortages; and slow delivery times for new aircraft.
Whatever the truth of that, some strategies remain constant.
Booking well in advance is the best way to secure a more reasonable price; flexibility over flight times, departure airports, and destinations can provide some useful wriggle room.
And, in an industry which proclaims that it is governed by the laws of supply and demand, the consumer has the ultimate power to leave the product on the shelf.
And that is what appears to be happening with Ireland’s inbound tourism, despite continuing disagreement over the figures.
The Central Statistics Office says that 528,100 visitors completed trips to Ireland in April, spending approximately €375m excluding air fares.
The headline figure, continuing a trend which was identified in the autumn, was down 4% on March, while spending decreased by 10%.
The only country which increased its number of tourists coming to Ireland year-on-year was Britain, which provided 41% of our visitors, while 18% originated from North America.
While the debate over the statistics continues, one person who won’t be arguing over his figures is Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary.
Mr O’Leary is set to receive a bumper performance-related bonus in the region of €125m six years after reaching a share options remuneration deal with his airline.
While opinions can be divided about Mr O’Leary and his abrasive style, it is indisputable that he has played a blinder on behalf of his company — and the consumer, who would be facing even higher fares without Ryanair’s highly competitive impact on the market.
What would 21st century communications be like without the pervasive growth of the acronym, that mid-20th century grammatical device which takes the initial letter of a phrase and turns it into a new word.
Not everyone likes them, and the president of the United States (that’s Potus to the rest of us) has a particular problem with one of the newest.
Until this week, the world was of the opinion that a taco was a Mexican street food, a corn tortilla which can be wrapped around all manners of delicious filling — refried beans, sour cream, guacamole, different varieties of meat, and (essentially) chilli peppers, and coriander.
But following a waspish comment from a business journalist, Taco is now a useful way of describing Mr Trump’s policy on punitive tariffs, an acronym expanded to mean Trump Always Chickens Out.
Like the best insults, it carries enough truth to sting.
Mr Trump was miffed when he was asked a question about Wall Street’s new description of him during a White House press conference.
But the rest of the world laughed. Humour can be a great leveller. We need more of it.
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