Hundreds of embryos in storage at clinics remain in 'a state of limbo'
Thursday November 16 2006
Dr Walsh, who heads the clinic which treated the couple for infertility and now stores their embryos, said he believed that life began at implantation and not at fertilisation.
"For the first time that has been addressed today," he said. Only around 20pc of the frozen embryos have potential for life, he said.
Defending the practice of freezing surplus embryos, he said to implant all of them in the woman would create a multiple pregnancy and this needed to be avoided at all costs, he added.
Meanwhile, it is estimated that hundreds of frozen embryos, many of which are in "a state of limbo" and will never be used are in storage in fertility clinics here.
But although the couple who stored them no longer wants the embryos doctors could be struck off if they are destroyed.
Clinics started offering the embryo freezing services to couples here a few years ago, but in many cases they no longer intend to use them to have another child.
Dr Peter Brinsden, medical director of the Clane Hospital fertility clinic in Kildare, said frozen embryos could remain in storage for fifty to one hundred years and technically stay viable.
They are allowed perish with the consent of parents in Britain after a couple of years, but lack of regulation of fertility treatments in this country means that clinics have to preserve them.
"Some sensible decision has to be made on this sooner or later," he said.
The Medical Council, which regulates doctors, allows for the original parents to donate surplus embryos to other couples trying to have children, but explicitly states they cannot be destroyed.
Dr Brinsden, who also practices in Bourn Hall fertility clinic in the UK, said he believed that yesterday's High Court decision was the correct one.
He said similar cases involving separated couples who had stored embryos have been taken in the UK and each partner should have the right to object to their use if they do not want any more children .
"We would feel much more confident if we had sensibly drafted regulations," he said. A government-commissioned report, covering all aspects to assisted human reproduction, was published two years ago but the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children has been instructed to draw up yet another report.
A spokesperson for the committee said progress in this area will probably be delayed again if yesterday's case is appealed to the Supreme Court.
- Eilish O'Regan
