We can assure our colleague from the dentistry profession, Miriam Sciberras (The Sunday Times,January 16), that we spent nine months deliberating on assisted procreation and the delicate issue of freezing of embryos, and it is rather surprising how she for one did not demand to discuss the issue with the select committee once she rightly feels so strongly about it.
Let it be clear that for all three of us, it was all about shouldering responsibility and not at all about rushing in where angels fear to tread!
Had Dr Sciberras delved deeper, as we did, she would have avoided the prejudicial rhetoric, “Who would adopt embryos that carry a genetic disease, or that have been already eliminated on health grounds in the implantation process?”
Directive 2006/17/EC, which defines ‘reproductive cells’ as all tissues and cells intended to be used for assisted reproduction, hence including embryo adoption, stipulates that donations other thanby partners must meet a number of criteria:
3.1. Donors must be selected on the basis of their age, health and medical history…
3.2. The donors must be negative for HIV 1 and 2, HCV, HBV and syphilis, and sperm donorsmust additionally be negative for chlamydia.
3.3. HTLV-I antibody testing must be performed for donors living in or coming from high-incidence areas.
3.4. Additional testing may be required, depending on the donor’s history and characteristics of tissue or cells donated (e.g. RhD, malaria, CMV, T. cruzi).
3.5. For autologous donors, if the removed tissues and cells are to be stored or cultured, the same minimum set of biological testing requirements must apply as for an allogeneic living donor.
3.6. Genetic screening for autosomal recessive genes known to be prevalent, according to international scientific evidence, in the donor’s ethnic background and an assessment of the risk of transmission of inherited conditions known to be present in the family must be carried out, after consent is obtained.
The diagram accompanying the letter depicts a second trimester foetus (more than 12 weeks), while the select committee recommended strongly even against allowing days to pass to choose which embryo to make use of (blastocyst stage).
We have it from the horse’s mouth that in two weeks this month the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit had to cater for the simultaneous admission of six extremely premature babies of 24 weeks’ gestation resulting from artificial multifetal gestationthat unfortunately can only be avoided by improving IVF success rates by repeating the procedure using a minimal number of frozen embryos rather than introducing all three or four embryos at once.