New law forces Italian couple with genetic disease to implant all their IVF embryos

An Italian judge ordered a sterile couple to transfer all the embryos obtained with assisted reproduction techniques, despite the fact that both would-be parents carry the recessive gene for β thalassaemia, wanted a preimplant diagnosis, and would not keep a child born with the condition. The law, approved early this year ( BMJ 2004;328: 9), bans both freezing and destroying embryos, limits to three the number of oocytes that can be fertilised, and states that all the created embryos must be transferred. It also restricts the use of assisted reproduction techniques to sterile couples. But the law does not affect the legislation allowing abortion in …