Life starts at fertilisation and it should be respected from the very beginning, a group of professionals opposing embryo freezing insists.

Would you have liked it if you were frozen like a piece of meat?

“It is for this reason that, although in favour of oocyte vitrification, known as fast egg-freezing, we are against the freezing of any fertilised egg,” biologist Pierre Schembri Wismayer told a University debate on IVF.

“Once an egg is fertilised, its DNA is formed andthere is also a 30 per cent chance the embryo dieswhile it’s being thawed,”said Dr Schembri Wismayer, from Professionals Against Embryo Freezing.

“Would you have liked it if you were frozen like a piece of meat,” he asked.

Yet, Labour MP Michael Farrugia said some people would have not been born had they not been frozen.

Dr Farrugia sat on the House Social Affairs Committee discussing assisted procreation, which appears to agree that oocyte vitrification was safe for both the embryo and the mother.

The cryopreservation process involves flash-freezing eggs (oocytes) withoutthe formation of ice crystals within the cells.

However, the Committee and the lobby group disagree on one “exceptional issue”.

The professionals believe that two or three fertilised eggs should be injected in the mother and none shouldbe frozen.

Dr Farrugia said that when only two fertilised eggs could be injected and a third was successfully fertilised, this should be frozen until it could be used.

Although fertilisation of the third egg was rare, through oocyte vitrification the rate of frozen fertilised eggs was now at a minimum.

During the debate, Dr Farrugia said the government was dragging its feet on IVF regulation and it was highly unlikely that a law would be moved during this legislature.

But a Justice Ministry spokesman said the draft Bill on IVF was being discussed by Cabinet. Once discussions were concluded, the Bill would be presented to the Nationalist Parliamentary Group and then introduced for a First Reading in Parliament.