Ethics case plea over woman's frozen eggs

A woman has asked for ethical approval to become the mother of New Zealand's first baby from frozen eggs.

Her application through a fertility clinic to use her thawed eggs has triggered an evaluation into the safety of freezing and thawing human eggs, before Health Minister Pete Hodgson makes a ruling.

Frozen eggs have been used in fertility clinics overseas since the late 1990s. The oldest of the estimated 150 children from the experimental technique is under 10.

Internationally there is still caution about using frozen eggs because of uncertainties over whether the children will develop abnormalities. So far they are reported to be healthy.

The medical director of Fertility Associates in Wellington, Professor John Hutton, was yesterday unwilling to divulge details about the woman's case, but said that for ethical reasons she had chosen to freeze some of her eggs, rather than fertilised embryos.

"The sort of patients who request this have strong ethical reasons regarding conception. They feel that once the sperm gets inside the egg an individual life has begun."

Professor Hutton also revealed that his clinic had first thawed and fertilised a woman's eggs and implanted the embryos in her uterus about 18 months ago, but she had a miscarriage.

Dr Richard Fisher, director of Fertility Associates, said the group's Hamilton clinic had also performed the treatment for one woman, but it did not result in a pregnancy.

Those two cases happened before the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Order last year which, in effect, banned the use of frozen eggs despite permitting the continuation of egg freezing.

The Wellington application to the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology has been passed to an associated advisory committee, which will make a recommendation to Mr Hodgson.

The advisory committee's chairwoman, Professor Sylvia Rumball, said yesterday it was assessing the risks and benefits of using thawed eggs as part of its wider analysis.

"It's a bigger piece of work than some anticipated some months ago."

The committee would ask for public submissions early next year as part of consultation on a range of fertility issues.

Dr Fisher said Fertility Associates had frozen the eggs of six or seven women in Auckland.

The most common reason was women facing cancer treatment that could leave them infertile. Other women had an ethical preference for freezing eggs rather than embryos.

The least common reason involved women who wanted fertility insurance as they approached the end of their child-bearing years but were not yet ready for children or did not have a partner.

Professor Hutton said that while egg freezing was preferred by some for ethical reasons, he steered people away from it as the success rate was far lower than for in-vitro fertilisation using fresh eggs.

One of the problems with egg freezing is ice forming inside the egg and disrupting cell-division processes.

A European fertility conference in June was told of improvements in a process called vitrification which was associated with a higher pregnancy rate. Dr Fisher said Fertility Associates was moving towards using that method.


HOW IT WORKS

* Up to 15 eggs are removed from the ovaries using a needle, following hormone injections to stimulate egg production.

* The eggs are put in a narrow tube and frozen in liquid nitrogen to -196C. They can be stored indefinitely.

* To be fertilised, the eggs are thawed and sperm is injected into them.

* They are grown into embryos and implanted in the uterus.