Updated | New embryo authority unveiled today after minister flags vested interest

Health minister Godfrey Farrugia today presented a new board of the Embryo Protection Authority, after dissolving the previous five-person board that his predecessor Joe Cassar appointed.

The new chairman is former judge Philip Sciberras, already appointed to a commission for the holistic revision of justice and the family commission, as well as the St Vincent de Paule home's management home.

Other members are family therapist Simone Attard, paediatrician Patrick Sammut, psychotherapist Mariella Meachen and psychologist Pauline Baldachhino.

The first authority, a vetting council for prospective parents seeking in vitro fertilization services from the national health service, was dissolved after one of its members was found to have had a "vested clinical interest", a ministry source said.

The Embryo Protection Authority was constituted in January 2013 by the previous administration, and was supposed to vet applications by couples seeking IVF, as legislated in parliament the previous year. MPs banned embryo freezing and any form of IVF that does not employ the method of egg freezing.

The EPA will be reconstituted after Farrugia felt the members appointed to the board "did not conform with the Embryo Protection Act".

The five-person board appointed by former health minister Joe Cassar consisted of gynaecologist Albert Scerri, who carries out his practice at both Mater Dei Hospital and the private St James Hospital, which previously was the only provider of IVF treatment.

The other members were retired judge Albert Magri, paediatrician Valerie Said Conti, University of Malta lecturer and psychologist Clarissa Sammut Scerri. The former minister also installed a member of the Bioethics Consultative Committee, Daniela Cassar, to the authority even though the 27-year-old lawyer was still studying for a Master's degree in bioethics.