I’m a chemist, and even as you read I know 50% of readers are forming a picture of me in a white coat stood inside a pharmacy. (and no, that would make me a pharmacist and not a chemist!) In my professional life I have to combat a lot of misconceptions, indeed part of my job is to challenge those assumptions head on. 

I get to show people that not all chemists are old blokes, that we have a huge variety of careers and experiences beyond the walls of a laboratory and that on the whole we work for the betterment of society and the world as a whole. As a group, chemists are not some force for evil trying to pollute everything!

In my life as an IVF patient I find I face some pretty steep misconceptions as well.

Misconception 1: We’re old and have left it too late. – Not so, I’ve been trying for children for well over 5 years and at less than 35 I will by no means be Britain’s oldest mother, naturally conceived or otherwise. True many women going through IVF will be somewhat past 25 but a) many clinics wont even accept women younger than that and b) IVF and ICSI are very often the last port of call so of course we are going to be a little older, we’ve tried everything else!!

Misconception 2: We must want it all, i.e. a career and a family. Most professional men hold down a successful career and still have a family, why shouldn't women be allowed to do the same? The fact that I’m a woman seriously impedes my earning potential already and the idea I might want to take time off to have a family will see my earnings sink further still in comparison.

Misconception 3: The infertility is the woman’s fault. I hate words like fault; this is not about assigning blame but about over coming obstacles together. (But since we’re here in nearly 50% of couples where there is a known fertility issue the problem comes from the sperm.) However it is always the woman who has to take the drugs and time off from work, even when her partner has to have surgical sperm retrieval I doubt it is quite the same interruption on his life (though maximum respect for doing it guys!)

Misconception 4: We are taking away public money that would be better-spent treating cancer.  Just what proportion of cancer patients have to pay for their own treatment, because I bet it isn’t as high as the number paying for their own fertility treatment? OK, you could argue that through taxes most smokers have in effect paid in advance, but unlike smoking our infertility doesn’t pollute the air around us infecting others with secondary infertility. Rarely is anyone infertile by his or her own choice, even those poor girls left infertile by Chlamydia didn’t actively choose to catch it.

Misconception 5: What we are doing is ‘un-natural’. As a scientist I find I often take issue with the usage of natural and un-natural, I take particular issue with this when someone on the TV tells me they could never do something so un-natural – and so covering your face with make-up and sitting under 1000KW lights while being filmed is natural? What is so ‘un-natural’ about wanting to build a family with the person you love?

Less than 50 years ago ‘the pill’ (developed at least in part by a chemist) was heralded as an outstanding breakthrough, allowing us to have ‘control’ over our own fertility. At that time we had huge respect for our doctors and scientists – what happened to change that? Why is it so popular now to think that controlling the other side of our fertility is wrong?

But perhaps I do you a disservice; in all probability you are reading this because you have your own struggle with infertility. You probably know most of these stereotypes don’t hold true. So please tell the rest of the world, there’s no evil in a white coat trying in to take over, just human beings working together to do the best we can. Perhaps in the end we’re all just a little misconceived.