BELFAST — Five frozen embryos at a Belfast artificial fertilization clinic may be destroyed because the labels broke and fell off, and the embryos can no longer be identified with any certainty. The scandal was revealed by an audit of the clinic's 3,700 embryos.
A local health official received a legal opinion that the embryos should be destroyed. “If the trust cannot be certain about the identity of these, then consent to use them would not be valid,” the official said. “It is a huge issue for [the couple involved] to decide, 'do we dispose of this or do we use it,' knowing that it is not properly labeled.” Dr. David Boyle, a local obstetrician and gynecologist, said, “These things do occasionally happen.”
(This update courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
