Frozen embryos are the new Pill says head of Midland Fertility Services

Oct 21 2010 by Diane Parkes, Birmingham Mail

FROZEN eggs are the new contraception pill says Dr Gill Lockwood, who this month celebrates ten years at the helm of Midland Fertility Services

Gill, who is medical director of the Aldridge-based centre, says the ability to freeze eggs is the biggest landmark infertility treatments have seen in the past decade.

And with a new vitrification process – ensuring the defrosted eggs can be as good quality as fresh – more women can now, controversially, put childbearing on hold.

The average age of giving birth to a first baby has already risen from 24 to 29 years old over the last decade.

The new procedure, known as vitrification flash-freezing of eggs, was launched by MFS last December.

“In this process it takes just a second to freeze the egg into a glassy substance and the recovery rate is much higher than with conventional freezing,” says Gill.

“Work being done in Italy, Spain and Japan has shown a pregnancy success rate which is comparable with fresh eggs.”

Indeed the centre is expecting its first baby born from a vitrified egg in December – the first in the UK.

“The work that has been done on the egg freezing process is the most significant landmark of the past ten years,” says Gill, who did research work in fertility at Oxford before moving to the West Midlands.

“We were the first clinic to produce healthy babies from frozen eggs.

“The implications for young cancer patients are huge as they can now be offered a realistic opportunity of having their own babies.”

The first ‘frozen egg baby’ in the UK was Emily Perry of Shropshire who was born in 2002 through MFS. And for many women facing cancer treatments, which would previously have killed any chances of having a child, the process offers them hope of motherhood in the future.

But the development has sparked controversy over the idea of doctors ‘playing God’.