Proposed IVF Technique Uses Three Parents

L A U S A N N E , Switzerland, July 3 -- Scientists appear to have found away that someday could allow women to become mothers after they nolonger can produce viable eggs, a potential advance in breaking thelast great barrier to fertility treatments.

Theoretically, the method could create an unlimited supply ofeggs for an infertile woman and allow her to have a child at a mucholder age. However, experts tried to play down that possibility,saying they strongly discourage post-menopausal motherhood onethical and practical grounds.

The technique, described Monday at a conference of the EuropeanSociety of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, involvestaking a cell from an infertile woman's body, and inserting it intoan emptied donated egg. The resulting egg contains the geneticmaterial of the woman wanting the baby, not of the donor.

Still Preliminary

Scientists warned that the work is still in the preliminarystages, and it could be years before the technique produces ahealthy baby, if ever. When they fertilized the manufactured eggwith sperm, it divided once, then collapsed.

Dr. Gianpiero Palermo, a professor of embryology at the Centerfor Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at Cornell University,said that besides older women, his technique could help those whocan't use their own eggs, either because they don't have any orbecause their eggs are no good.

Such women could include those whose ovaries are removed beforecancer treatment, those who were born without ovaries or women whoreach menopause at a young age.

Some Say Potentially Revolutionary

Prominent fertility researcher Dr. Zsolt Peter Nagy, who was notconnected with the project, said the technique potentially is oneof the most important advances in fertility treatment ever.

Fertility treatments took a major step forward in 1978, when ateam led by Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe conquered Fallopiantube problems with the introduction of in vitro fertilization,where the egg is fertilized outside the body and implanted in thewomb.