Fertility specialists charged after eggs go missing
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Your support makes all the difference.An embryologist and a hospital consultant are to face charges over the disappearance of frozen human eggs from fertility clinics, in what is believed the first case of its kind.
Paul Fielding, the head embryologist at a hospital in Basingstoke, is to appear in court in connection with eight charges of false accounting and obtaining money by deception, Hampshire police said yesterday. The respected scientist is also accused of assaulting four women, causing actual bodily harm.
The unnamed 46-year-old male consultant will face six charges of keeping a human embryo without a licence.
The case is believed to be the first legal proceedings taken under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Yesterday police confirmed both men had been summonsed to appear before magistrates in Southampton on 24 January. The action follows an investigation ofcomplaints over the storage of cryo-preserved genetic material at two clinics.
The inquiry was triggered when a couple using the Hampshire Clinic complained to police after their frozen eggs went missing. Further investigations revealed discrepancies in the labelling of eggs at the clinic. Similar allegations involved the fertility unit at the nearby North Hampshire Hospital's fertility centre.
Mr Fielding, 43, from Whit-church, who has three children, was suspended from the Hampshire Clinic in September 2000 and arrested a month later. The police said: "The court appearance follows a lengthy Hampshire police investigation into complaints of irregularities in the storage of cryo-preserved genetic material at the Hampshire Clinic and North Hampshire Hospital."
The discrepancies at the clinic and the hospital led to 39 couples being told their frozen eggs would be scrapped because the records were unreliable. The couples may have to repeat their fertility treatment.
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