i hope the collapse is proceeding as planned but haven't been able to keep up with the threads. I trust you guys are handling all the evil duties. -g- what the hell is going on in England?
White Couple Have Black Twins After Mix-up at Clinic (Update1)
2002-07-08 07:50 (New York)
(Adds numbers of people seeking IVF in fourth paragraph.)
London, July 8 (Bloomberg) -- A white couple have had black
twins after a mix-up at a fertility clinic in the U.K., the BBC
said, confirming a report in the Sun newspaper.
There may now be a legal battle over who are the legitimate
parents, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Internet news service
Ananova reported.
The white couple, who have not been named, went to the
fertility clinic for in vitro fertilization treatment after trying
unsuccessfully to have a child, the Sun said.
About 27,000 couples seek IVF treatment in the U.K. every
year. It involves mixing sperm from a man and eggs from a woman in
a laboratory before they are placed in the woman to develop. In
this case, when the twins were born the couple noticed they were
dark-skinned and suspected something had gone wrong, the BBC said.
It is possible the clinic used a black man's sperm to
fertilize the white woman's egg, or implanted a black couple's
fertilized egg into the woman, the BBC said.
``At the very least it is a mess and the tragedy is these
poor twins could be caught in the middle,'' Sky News cited Vivian
Nathenson of the British Medical Association as saying. ``There is
going to be a serious loss of confidence.''
Patients shouldn't be alarmed, according to Sammy Lee, a
doctor at the Portland Hospital in London, the BBC said. ``It
should not be a surprise to people because we know that human
error can always occur,'' he told the BBC. The couple had decided
they wanted to keep the babies, he said, and ``I don't see
anything wrong with that.''
There are no records of a similar case occurring in Britain,
the BBC reported. In the U.S., Donna Fasano, who is white, gave
birth to a black child in 1998. A judge ordered that she should
hand over the infant to his biological parents.
In the Netherlands, Wilma Stuart, who is white, gave birth to
dark-skinned twins in 1993. DNA tests showed the hospital confused
sperm from her husband with some from a man from the Dutch
Antilles. She kept the twins.
--Mark Hughes in London, or at mhughes@bloomberg.net, through the
Paris newsroom +33 1 53 65 50 50. Editor: Nundy, *Kirkham
Story illustration: Click on {TNI UK HEA BN <GO>} for more health-
related stories from the U.K.
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