Black Twins Born to White Couple

[David Morris]

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=sciencenews&StoryID=1174805

LONDON (Reuters) - An historic legal battle was brewing in Britain as a 
newspaper reported on Monday that a white couple had had black twins as the 
result of a mistake during fertility treatment.

The couple will be at the center of a court case this autumn to decide who 
should be considered the babies' real parents, in the first reported case of 
its kind in Britain.

The mix-up involves a black couple also trying for a test-tube baby at the 
same time, The Sun newspaper reported, quoting a source at the authority 
which runs the fertility clinic involved.

No confirmation was available from health officials, who instead swiftly 
circulated a gagging order imposed on them by the High Court.

The injunction also forbade naming the two sets of parents involved or the 
clinic.

Experts say a mistake could have occurred in one of three ways in the IVF 
(In Vitro Fertilization) process, which involves fertilizing an egg with 
sperm before implanting the resulting embryo -- often two or three at a time 
-- in the woman's womb.

The wrong sperm could have been used to fertilize the right egg, the right 
sperm could have been used to fertilize the wrong egg, or the embryo 
implanted in the woman may have been another couple's altogether.




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