First babies born from frozen eggs

TWINS Jérémie and Keren are the first babies to be born in France from frozen eggs, although the technique is widespread in the rest of the world.

Professor René Frydman, who also created the first test-tube baby in France, said the babies, who weighed in at 3.2kg and 2.8kg on Tuesday, were doing well in the Antoine Béclère hospital in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine.

However, he criticised France’s laws on fertility technology, calling them outdated as he was restricted in the methods he could use to freeze the eggs.

Slow-freezing is the only method allowed, but it is not the most effective. He would have preferred to use the world-standard fast-freezing technique, but this is, so far, not approved.

Prof Frydman said he hoped that revision of the bio-ethics laws would permit the development of new methods of freezing eggs.

The first French test-tube baby, Amandine, was born in 1982, four years after Louise Brown was born as the world’s first test-tube baby in the UK. In 2006, Louise gave birth to her own first baby.

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