April 20, 2024

Italian IVF laboratory mix-up

An Italian couple are demanding compensation after a mix-up in their IVF clinic resulted in dark-skinned twins. The clinic in the city of Modena believes that a reused pipette contained the sperm of a North African man. The news came only days after a hospital in Turin decided to give two women the morning-after pill only minutes after they had been inseminated because they had received sperm from the wrong fathers.

Italian IVF doctors have asked the public to be understanding and to realise that world-wide, the number of such mistakes has been minimal. “The error must be taken into account, but I would not cry scandal,” said Carlo Flamigni, the president of the Italian Society for Fertility and Sterility. “When a technique has been perfected and becomes routine, you must only expect that attention levels drop. It’s the risk of our daily work, not just for doctors, but for every other profession.”