ISSUES surrounding the freezing of embryos must be debated urgently with plans under way to freeze embryos in Ireland, Senator Mary Henry has said.
She was commenting yesterday on reports in the Irish Medical Times that a company which has had to destroy frozen embryos in Britain plans a freezing programme in conjunction with a fertility clinic at Clanc Private Hospital, Co Kildare.
Her call was echoed by the Fine Gael TD, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, who said huge ethical and moral issues were involved in the reproductive technologies available.
The situation could not be allowed to go unregulated and people would have to debate what sort of legislation they wanted, she said.
The British company, Bourn Hall Clinic of Cambridge, was one of those which had to destroy frozen embryos this month under British legislation after holding them for five years. The company is believed to be planning to establish an Irish embryo freezing project within months.
Senator Henry, a consultant physician, said the freezing of embryos avoided the dangers of using drugs to over stimulate a woman's reproductive system a second or third time if she wanted to become pregnant again.
The issues were too great to go without discussion and legislation. But, she said, her calls for legislation had not been heeded.
"We are getting into a very serious area where we are saying it's every couple's right to have children come hell or high water.".
If we were to have frozen embryos we needed to work out what we wanted to do with them. "You can't have them there until they become the sisters of their grandchildren."
Medical Council guidelines were inadequate to deal with the present situation, she said. They said all fertilised embryos produced by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) should be replaced in the mother and that ideally this should be three embryos. "But they don't say what you should do with numbers four, five or six. Those embryos are being disposed of."
The Medical Council guidelines appeared to rule out the freezing of embryos, but not explicitly, and the use of donors.
"This is a huge area which needs a lot of discussing. IVF started off as something very simple which was for women with blocked fallopian tubes. We all thought it was wonderful. Now it's got very complicated."
Ms Fitzgerald said that what appalled her about the debate in Britain "is the way medicine has become so unregulated. We can't let medical science operate in a vacuum. We have to look at the whole area of emerging technologies in reproduction."
Instead of facing the issues, "we tend to bury our heads in the sand. We are operating even at the moment in a very unregulated way. It almost seems as if we are afraid to begin to discuss it."
Efforts to contact a spokesperson for Clane Hospital were unsuccessful.