“My doctor talked about the ethics of infertility treatment and how some clinics will try (and charge for) all sorts of unproven treatment where often there was no medical reason for a particular patient to require that unproven treatment.”

The unproven treatment issue is a really interesting one because most medical professionals consider “proven” to mean something supported by multiple randomised controlled trials. The problem is that cutting-edge ideas are new and haven’t had the chance to be sufficiently trialled (or, in some cases, don’t lend themselves to such randomised designs for ethical and/or practical reasons).

So, should all the new ideas be ignored until they are considered “proven”?