IVF law dubbed ‘protection of human embryos bill’

Justice and family minister Chris Said has presented a motion for the first reading of the law that will regulate in vitro fertilisation, the first of its kind to regulate the industry, in parliament today Monday evening.

The bill will not be tabled as yet, as it still has to undergo its own dissection by the government's parliamentary group. But already questions are being raised on the content of this law which tellingly, wears its bias on its name: the Protection of Human Embryos Bill.

Why not the In Vitro Fertilisation Regulation Bill? Government's moral dilemma may centre around the extent to which it will allow the freezing of embryos that are not immediately implanted in a woman, and what happens to those embryos if they are never used later on.

Lawrence Gonzi has already gone on record stating that oocyte vitrification - freezing a woman's ova before it is fertilised with sperm - would skirt couples', and government's, ethical dilemmas over the freezing of embryos, something that Catholic leaders are opposed to.

The Opposition's former shadow health minister Michael Farrugia, who formed part of the select committee on IVF which expressed agreement with the freezing of embryos, has told MaltaToday that the forthcoming law "should keep in mind how best to limit the production of extra embryos."

One of the by-products of IVF can involve the creation of additional embryos: first a woman is hyperstimulated with drugs - up to five weeks of daily injections - to create an excess of ova, then they are fertilised with sperm. Not all fertilised ova reach the state of an embryo, some dying naturally in the process; and not every embryo that is implanted in the womb is successful.

To make such a process less costly, and less emotionally and physically taxing on women, the freezing of embryos allows them to repeat the process without going through additional cycles of hyperstimulation.

When the select committee led by Nationalist MP Jean-Pierre Farrugia recommended that government considers embryo freezing, it said that frozen embryos left unclaimed by parents should be made available for adoption. But the suggestion raised some protestation by Malta's anti-abortion lobby.

Farrugia however says that couples should be offered all possible alternatives, including the possibility to freeze the eggs.

"The law must be guided by the best medical practice that can safeguard the health of women, the foetus, and the newborn child. Couples must be able to choose from the best medical advice possible and seek ethical advice.

"But on the whole, we must have a system that gives rise to the least possibility for the creation of frozen embryos."

If this general sense of agreement prevails on the forthcoming bill, the question is how will Malta's regulatory 'embryology' authority determine medical protocols for childless couples: would doctors be legally obliged to demand that the ova are frozen before fertilising the eggs and freezing the embryos?

Farrugia insists that it's for this reason that an authority would be responsible for developing medical protocols in line with reproduction technologies as they evolve.

"The question after hyperstimulation would be: should we fertilise just three ova out of so many ova, and then if we have three embryos and implant a maximum of two, should we freeze the embryo? The answer would be yes," Farrugia says.

This direction in policy will hinge on the success of egg-freezing technology itself, and whether it will deliver successful results that will not allow women to undergo additional hyperstimulation cycles. Farrugia himself is positive, disputing a criticism that cryopreservation (the scientific word for medial freezing) does not deliver results.

"It varies from clinic to clinic, but advances have been made recently. Even I have changed my opinion over the freezing of eggs since the report of the select committee."