Think tank rages at NHS' £700 bill for fertility clinic porn

All they need...

...is a glory hole and a milking machine (I have such a smutty mind).

Who runs these stupid "thinktanks"?

This is ridiculous, it costs much more to test failed samples and rebooking appointments due to "willpower fail". Men are naturally strongly driven by visual stimulus, no way around that.

The mags provided are so toned now already that any celebrity mag or even the Sun looks more pornographic. Also I wouldn't touch them for fear of running into sticky pages (yuck!)

Finally, while initial samples can be provided from home, the fertilisation itself needs it fresh from the donor.

I guess the only solution that pleases everyone is to just get free Wifi into the clinics, and say it's for family planning research :-)

"Manning [...] is a member of the College of Optomerists."

Well, surely he should be in favour!

Julia Manning is a member of the College of Optometrists

Is she worried that the clinics' patients will go blind?

Porn doesn't demean women...

"encourages an unhealthy attitude towards women in general, demeans female NHS workers"

Porn doesn't demean women, men do. Women might hate to be objectified, but lets face it, that is how guys think. We are hard-wired and visually stimulated and from the onset of puberty we wish to have sex with any and every attractive female we see.

Good grief

Do they really have nothing better to complain about in the NHS?

Also, insert obligatory joke about optometrists benefiting from people masturbating more...

give me a break!

i've actually recently started donating to a clinic as i responded to an advert and thought it would be a nice thing to do and help people - unlike popular media steerotypes you don't get paid (its against the law) - you can only claim tiny travel expenses - actually less than I lose by not working AND I have to go every week for half a year - its the most unsexy environment i've ever been in - cubicles squidged up against cyro tanks - they do provided magazines and I assume that even these will be a bit boring after 6 months.... hardly much to ask is it???

Porn?

If they're getting it from the likes of WH Smith's, it's just jazz mags, not full-blown (oo-er-missus) porn.

Mind you, asking them to jack-off into a jar hardly seems to be [treating them] "with dignity and respect".

I would like to have a discussion with this woman.

I have just talked to a "researcher" at 2020. This report was unfunded - Essentially, all it encompasses is a single freedom of information request followed by an opinion piece.

I have taken part in fertility treatment myself. I feel that the authors of this report have no respect for me as a person. Putting me into a room with 4 blank walls and the sounds of ill people round me is _not_ a place where I personally can perform 'easily'. This is even worse than asking a woman to relax while this ice cold speculum is inserted.

Also, the suggestion that this can be done "at home" is stupid. The _reason_ for these "samples" is not so the doctor can have a good peer at it. It's so that the sample can be used to inseminate an egg.

The egg or the sperm are not of good quality - Otherwise the patient would not be there.

I would suggest that the report author sticks to eyes in the future. Or gets some more input from both the patients and the practitioners of a field before sticking her oar in.

Interesting...

Having had the dubious honour of partaking in such an exercise (though not at an NHS facility) I have to say that the option of 'help' was much appreciated. What may not be taken into consideration is the already humiliating act of having to do a private thing in a public place, especially since most people in the building know what "that room" is for.

In my (very limited) experience the pr0n option is offered, not mandatory, and if someone can close their eyes and bash one out with all the distractions already offered by aiming in a cup then more power to you. I found it a lot easier with the playboy spread of Kim Kardashian near by.

And for all the millions that the NHS does waste, I'd think this would be

a) peanuts

b) actually useful

Laughably I bet more than the 21 sterling lost to WH Smiths on this front is stolen from petty cash in respective clinics on a far more frequent basis. Though the several thousands spent on a viewing suite does seem excessive...

All of this sidesteps the arguements employed about how pr0n supposedly degrades women, leads to addiction (?) etc. These arguements may have merit to someone sat at home in front of the deepest darkest corners of the net, but for someone that needs to actually produce something in a less than comfortable environment I'd think there was a sufficent counter point.

If someone was that opposed to that content they would not use it at the clinic, and if they were quite partial to naked women then I suspect they could do a lot better than finding an excuse to have a quick shifty down at their nearest NHS facility that offered it.

AC, obvously. And Paris, because I bet she'd be quite useful on this front. Cheaper too?

lol

Seriously... lol

The NHS offers one free cycle of IVF when couples have problems conceiving, that's £3,500 each time, so a total of £700 is so little that it's irrelevant.

There is a serious lack of donated sperm in the UK, partly because of tracable paternity, but also because it's seen as seedy (see what I did there?), taking grot out of the suites will hit this even further.

Then let's think about ethics and "degrading women", that is just crap, the porn industry is full of exploiters and the exploited, lack of regulation and protection for the men and women in the porn industry is the problem, and we don't want to approach it because it's "dirty", sex is great, porn is great, and (in my experience) many women love porn (although usually involving a bit more plot and the occasional man, but each to their own, Nancy Friday ladies?).

Easy solution

Require all clinics to label the sperm as "produced using porn" if it was.

The all the right-wing nutters can ask for porn-free sperm.

As none will be available, that particular strain of DNA will die out.

Problem Solved.

Against the clock!

The suggestion to produce a sample at home does not take into account that there is only a half hour window to catch you breath, get to the clinic whilst keeping keeping sample warm (under an armpit is the recommended method) and hand it over to the right person. Almost impossible unless you happen to live in the same street.

It can require "help"....

Speaking from first hand experience I can say that providing a "sample" (in my case for fertility reasons) in a hostpital is not as easy as you'd hope . You get shown into a typical sterile white hospital room, with a little bed (some one elses pubes on the cover) and big sign over the sink saying "Please wash yourself before producing your sample". Kind of puts you off.

In this case there was magazines for assistance but they were from the 60's and 70's. On the plus point you get to put your sample through a little window when done and the get the hell out of there. I shudder at the memory :)

Stupid W**kers

This is really trolling for column inches isn't it?

Julia Manning really needs to get her head out of her backside.

Men go there to blow their beans. Either for medical investigations or to help infertile couples. It is all very well saying bring in something you made earlier, but what she fails to mention that once its left the body, the product in question has a very short shelf life if not stored correctly, so if the samples aren't box fresh more money will be wasted in retests and time.

If she's so concerned prehaps she ought to help out, though from observing her picture she looks like that would be beneath her.

So let me get this strait

Those men get to look at smut magasines to get themselves off in a situation that is

1: Not exactly inspiring

2: Stressfull.

And this "think tank" would rather they just use imagination? Because it's otherwise damaging to the image of the female staff? So instead of thinking about the cleavage of the receptionist, who'd probably rather they didn't while doing that, they think about the naked woman who actually got payed to serve that very purpose. And that's bad?

Sorry, i don't get it.

Manning has no Idea!

As somebody who has had to go through fertility treatment and had to produce samples I have to Julia Manning has no idea what she is talking about.

In my experience having no visual assistance was unthinkable as the room and conditions used were not conducive in those circumstances. Being able to produce on demand with no assistance is a very difficult thing to do in this environment. The knowleadge that this could be the difference between you and you partner having a family is a very stressfull position to be in.

Also most, if not all, fertility clinics require samples as fresh as possible to increase the chance of successfull fertilisation. Cracking one off at home and traveling some distance to the clinic would not be acceptable.

I say that this is money well spent. If anybody object to the material then it can be removed and replaced for the next person.

I imagine that Manning, and her partner, have never had call to use the services of a fertility clinic and has no idea what it is like for the patients.

Perhaps she should talk to a few before spouting off.

ancient tech

wtf, nobody uses p2p networking over there? There's not a single mention of torrents or p2p networking being used for porn entertainment in the article :p

dignity

they're jerking off into a pot in a hospital toilet. how much dignity can they lose?

potentially harmful to the men exposed to the material

If porn was harmful, I for one would have been stone dead long ago.

Can't they use..

.. the stuff they produced in house?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/06/london_hospital/

Has anyone from the "think tank" ever bought porn???

It's bloody expensive, it's not like popping out and buying a DVD of Flash Gordon from a petrol station forecourt for £2.99, some of the more specialised material is £50 a pop, ummm apparently.

I obviously wouldn't know myself, I download mine.

Fluffers?

nuff said!

The NHS can't win, can it?

Spend $7.5K for a special room in Liverpool and the Taxpayers Alliance whines.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/26/n$hs_trust/

Spend less than a tenth of the amount for the rest of the UK, and someone else whines.

Self-righteous puritan ahoy!

After reading her article it is clear that this woman is living in her own puritanical world and trying to force that vision upon the rest us, like it or not.

She see's no distinction between soft porn and obscene publications and so thinks all porn should be illegal. She has no problem classifying the sample rooms as a "workplace" and thinks it should be treated the same as a cafe or ward - ignoring the fact that they will be empty except for the male producing a sample.

Her next step would probably be to ban the simple physical act of masterbating in the "workplace" altogether and go for a more sterile, invasive approach to obtaining samples - probably peformed by robots so as not to adversely affect the 'dignity' of any female nurses nearby by exposing them to nudity.

The fact that such a self-righteous puritan as this is in such a well placed think-tank in the 1st place should be a dire warning to us all...

Think-tanks .. quangos .. lobbyists .. shelters for busy bodies and loons. Those are what should be outlawed.

A missed point

"the practice of providing smut in clinics as an unacceptable use of public funds which encourages an unhealthy attitude towards women in general,"

Even the gay mags?

I'd also like to pointo out that the women's porn mags offer an unrealistic expectation of men.

On every single page a man is doing the cleaning or the washing up

Beware...

More Tory stooges demonising public services. They are vermin.

It could have been worse...

...they could have been infected with Apple fever and issued a porn-laden iPad for every wanker who comes through the door.

This is on page 2 of the comments, so won't get read

Did no-one else notice this comment: "For the NHS to unnecessarily introduce addictive material ... to patients during their treatment beggars belief." Leaving aside the [big] questions about who decides that it is unnecessary (as several posters have stated, it damn well is necessary), whether pornography is addictive, is this stupid woman giving us an insight into future health policy? Are we going to see other "addictive" treatments removed from NHS treatment - pain killers and antidepressants are two that spring to mind - because they cost much more than £700?

Julia Manning is a total arse - has she spent any time in US politics?

I suppose the question to ask Ms Manning is this:

Can she rub one out on demand in a public place with only minimal privacy, and provide the evidence afterwards to a member of the opposite sex who she is not in a close relationship to?

If she can, it probably explains a lot of what comes out of her office.

Oh and googling this story, and the comments on other fora, especially abroad, I believe the general reaction to her comments is ridicule.

Paris? Well....[rest of this answer deleted after legal advice] ;p

Samples by willpower!

This must be the politically correct phrase for masturbation.

For Roman Catholics it must mean growing hair on their palms.

"so it's not possible to calculate the return on investment"

Would that be in Pounds Sterling, or litres?

Absolutely

I am in favor of banning the use of pr0n in fertility clinics altogether.

Donatees should at least be required to pose for pix and if no donor picks 'em

natural selection should be allowed to take its course.

~D

Thanks American culture!

"is potentially harmful to the men exposed to the material"

Violence, Gore, Torture, guns = Good, wholesome american values

Breasts = HEATHEN! BURN THE HERETICS! THINK OF THE CHILDREN etc

Glad to see we have adpoted the american school of thought.

also i read somewhere (citation needed because im lazy and forgetful) that certain porn..people (creators? manafacturers? producers?) donate magazines et al to hospitals for their fertility spank banks.

The PRC way

They have a much better system in China - pretty young nurses do it for you :)

Wasn't Ms. Titmuss available?

See, I've even found a job that they could do!

Paris, because she would certainly not mind obtaining my sample.

Only £700????????

That's a bit tight fisted of them isn't it?

(bit late on parade with that one, but better late than never...)

A Playboy subscription does not cost £700

and a dirty DVD is £22.50

so how many did the silly buggers buy?