Rome prosecutor probes reports of embryo mix-up

Couple launched suit over concerns about clinic management

(ANSA) - Rome, April 16 - The Rome prosecutor's office ordered an investigation Wednesday into reports alleging that the fertility clinic of a hospital in the Italian capital accidentally mixed up embryos.

Prosecutors are going to look into complaints about Rome's Sandro Pertini Hospital, which has been inundated with calls following reports that said embryos may have been switched among couples, with one woman reportedly carrying twins that may not be her own. One day earlier, a couple who believes their embryos may have been switched by mistake with those of another couple announced they were suing. In that case, the alleged switch occurred on December 4, when four women were scheduled to have viable embryos implanted.

Three of them became pregnant as a result of the procedure and the fourth expressed deep concerns that a mistake may have occurred. "If the embryos were mine, then obviously the children are mine as well. I couldn't live with the idea that children of mine are growing up somewhere in Italy," the fourth, a 36-year-old Rome woman, told local newspapers. "We were four aspiring mothers. The others are pregnant and I'm not," said the woman.

Rome's Pertini hospital has helped hundreds of people with assisted-fertility treatment, many of whom now fear that children they are expecting or that have been born to them may not be genetically theirs. The hospital is conducting a series of tests to verify the accuracy of DNA tests carried out by the parents who reported the embryo swap, "also to reassure the others," the hospital said. The lawyer of the couple that reported the mix-up also sent the documentation of the DNA exam to Roman public health authorities. The documentation will be analyzed while during the wait for the results of additional exams. The case of the mistaken embryos comes after a controversial ruling by Italy's Constitutional Court, which last Wednesday lifted a ban on the use of donor sperm and eggs in a law limiting assisted-fertility treatments.

Debate over the decision has pitted Catholics against members of the scientific community. "Finally, couples won't be forced to travel abroad," top oncologist Umberto Veronesi, a former health minister, told Roman daily Il Messaggero in an interview published last Thursday. Some 2,700 couples have been forced to travel abroad every year since so-called law 40 was approved 10 years ago, Veronesi said, stressing it "denied a couple's will and desire to become parents of a child they would raise with love".