The government-appointed Bioethics Consultative Committee said today that while it backed most of the recommendations on assisted procreation made by a parliamentary committee, it disagreed with the regular freezing of embryos.

Once a human life was produced in a laboratory, this should be protected and respected and no genetic or arbitrary decision should be made between the life of one human being and another, even in an early stage of development, the committee said.

It was, therefore, against the freezing of embryos in a regular manner as part of the IVF process since this would lead to an accumulation of millions of frozen embryos which could then be discarded or given up for experiments.

In this context, the committee said that one could agree with the adoption of frozen embryos by childless parents under proper regulation which saved the life of the embryos that were orphaned because of some incident during the IVF process and not through some regular process. However, it was ambitious to think that all frozen embryos could be adopted, even because many of them would have genetic anomalies.

The committee said the number of multiple pregnancies after IVF was relatively small and did not justify the destruction of so many human lives through freezing. Furthermore, this danger could be limited by having only a small number of embryos planted in the womb.

The committee said it felt that the parliamentary committee had not given sufficient importance to imminent developments for the freezing of women's ova.

The committee said it agreed that IVF treatment should be available on the NHS to heterosexual couples who were married or regulated by a law on cohabitation.

The bioethics committee is presided by former Nationalist MP Dr Michael Asciak.

Its members are Ms Maryanne Ciappara, Dr Brigitte Ellul, Dr Christian Scerri, Dr Ray Galea, Rev Prof Emmanuel Agius, Rev Dr Ray Zammit, Dr Alexandra Buttigieg, Dr John Torpiano, Dr Mary Anne Lauri, Ms Nikolina Farrugia, Dr Cedric Mifsud and Dr Denis Soleri.

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