Cyprus clinic at center of human egg trafficking probe FEATURE 09/23/2010

Cyprus clinic at center of human egg trafficking probe

FEATURE

09/23/2010
ZYGI — They may never see the light of day but Maria is not abandoning her Cypriot “children,” embryos that were seized after the fertility clinic

where they were conceived in vitro was closed on suspicion of human egg trafficking.

Petra House, a large stone building near the fishing village of Zygi that housed the clinic in southern

Cyprus, has been empty since mid-May when it was abandoned by its medical staff, mostly Russians.

“The staff have disappeared and the fate of our embryos is a mystery,” said Maria, an Italian who came to Cyprus for treatment and would not give her real name because of the investigation into the allegations.

“We cannot entrust our own lives to people without scruples, who play around with embryos and gametes as if they were toys,” she said.

Like other foreign patients, Maria and her husband were hoping the clinic’s bank of gametes — eggs and sperm — could help them start a family.

But the facility, which works with the eggs of young women mostly from Russia and eastern Europe, was closed on suspicion of illegal trade in human eggs based on the testimony of three Ukrainian women in their 30s..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100923com3.html