I also think that patients have access to information on their own, without the need for consultants. Of course, if patients have the money to spend on consultants and find them helpful, that’s fine. I just don’t think that people should feel that there is yet another party to pay in this process. It’s optional.

First, upon looking at her credentials, Angie is a very experienced and professionally trained fertility educator. She is the author of several best-selling and award-winning consumer health books on infertility. In addition, she is a licensed mental health professional who has devoted her time in educating patients about their fertility options and assisting them with their decision-making. As a result, I am not sure where you got the “self-proclaimed” part. While fertility consultants are not for everyone, Angie has a very successful practice helping hundreds of patients. She even has a waiting list for her services, and this is with virtually no marketing on her part. If there was not a need for this (as you say in your blog), this would certainly not be the case. Over the past several years, Angie has worked tirelessly to make infertility treatments more accessible and affordable to patients, including her recent book Budgeting for Infertility.

Secondly, even if we have different ideas about how to best go about addressing the problems within the fertility field, I think we can all agree that there is room for improvement. In fact, the ASRM has been vocal about acknowledging this lately, including holding a conference last week about the adequacy of regulation in this area and how we can make improvements. In fact, Dr. David Adamson was one of the keynote speakers. Again, I’m not sure where you got the information that no changes are needed in terms of regulation, other than a document that was written several years ago. I can assure you that this is not the assumption now, including among the leadership of the ASRM. Nine states are currently considering drafting their own legislation regulating infertility treatments which would significantly restrict access to patients. If we as a field do not come up with a better way to prevent the types of catastrophes that have been evident over the past year, it will be out of our hands and into the hands of other government officials with no training or knowledge in the field. ASRM realizes this and is trying to address this more effectively right now.

Blogs like the one you wrote can only be considered as destructive. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but by disparaging another colleague for wanting to improve the field and help patients build their families is uncalled for and highly unprofessional. This is exactly what gives the infertility field a bad name. We should be all working together to help patients.

And to show you that I am not alone in my thinking…here is the recent blog posting from Pamela Madsen, internationally known fertility advocate and former executive director of the American Fertility Association… http://www.thefertilityadvocate.com

Angie Best-Boss is another truth teller – and apparently, her truth telling is getting some people upset. You see Angie was interviewed in The Washington Times, “Having a Baby In The Fertility Maze”. The subject? Fertility Consultants. Oh, I have been done this path before. Is there a need for “Fertility Consultants?” or not? Is this just another service? Should they be licensed? In so many ways the patient groups that we have around the country are the precursor to “Fertility Consultants”. Do you think that any of the folks on the staff have licenses in fertility? As a prominent patient voice in the field of infertility – I can tell you that the only license I hold is in education – the certificate in patient advocacy that I hold, I earned by being and doing. And it is simply hubris that fertility center’s think that they can service all of the needs of a patient. They can’t. Patient’s also need a degree of separation from the center where they can say what they feel without worrying about getting punished by the center. That’s important. So,
Angie is saying what she believes to be true about the field in this article in The Washington Post – and she comments on regulation, or the lack there of in the field of reproductive medicine. In fact just last week the American Society of Reproductive Medicine held a meeting in Washington, DC to talk about the need for more oversight in the field.

But I guess that blogger, Kathy Bernado, of the Egg Donation and Surrogacy Blog didn’t hear about the meeting, because according to her, we have plenty of oversight and regulation in the field of reproductive medicine. No concerns at all where Kathy Bernado lives. Perhaps she should have made the trip to The Mandarin Hotel to talk to the fields industry leaders for at their big oversight meeting last week

Check out her blog entry ” More Myths About The Fertility Industry” Look, I have to be honest – Kathy’s blog really annoyed me. First off – it was nasty. Whenever someone start a blog be calling some “a self proclaimed ‘Fertility Planner’ – come on – pull your claws in! And second of all – it was uninformed.

But Angie didn’t need my help. Oh the dust was flying over the weekend in the blogosphere! Check out Angie’s response to the “dis”, in “The Fertility Industry’s Worst Kept Secret”.

I sincerely hope you will reconsider the comments you included in your blog. It certainly does not reflect well on you, your company, or the field as a whole. Instead, I hope you will join the rest of us in finding ways to work together with other professionals to improve the experience for the millions of patients out there who want to build their families.