I refer to Eleonora Porcu’s reassuring statement that her clinic has been studying oocyte vitrification since 1996 (August 10).

I would like to make it clear that the parliamentary select committee I chaired from February to July 2010 was advised by the Head of Department at Mater Dei on March 17, 2010, and by the chairman of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) on April 6, 2010, that 10 years down the line egg freezing was still not giving good results.

Moreover, according to the ESHRE chairman’s presentation to the parliamentary committee in Valletta in April 2010, “the terrible drawback that oocyte freezing started being used without any animal experimentation because there was no reason to do an experiment in animals like it was with embryos. And now, unfortunately, we start to have some data that is not really encouraging in terms of malformation”.

I write to demand clarifications from Dr Anna Veiga, the ESHRE chairman, or Dr Luca Gianaroli, the immediate past chairman, who, like Dr Porcu, is also based in Bologna, and who was our guest two-and-a-half years ago.