Embryo adoption for UK

Couples who have surplus embryos after undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment may be able to put them up for 'adoption' if a scheme currently being piloted in the US is set up over here.

British fertility specialists indicated that a national registry of embryos would be extremely useful for clinics in the UK - reducing the cost of treatment and offering hope to single or lesbian women who want to have a family. In a pilot project at the Center for Human Reproduction at Columbia University in New York, nearly a third of the 174 patients attending the clinic had asked about the the embryo adoption programme. Two-thirds were interested because of financial hardship, one-third were single women and one-sixth were lesbian couples.

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which licenses fertility treatment in the UK, said that there is nothing to stop a national registry for embryo adoption being set up in the UK. Couples with surplus embryos that they do not wish to use further treatment currently have the option of having them destroyed, donating them for research or donating them to another couple - by private arrangement between individual clinics and the couples concerned.

Under existing legislation, couples would not be allowed to profit from putting their embryos up for adoption. Latest figures show that 81 women received donated embryos in the UK in 1997, resulting in the births of 24 babies.