36.Espagne: adopter des embryons surnuméraires pour leur éviter de servir comme matériau de recherche.

A Spanish clinic that allows women to adopt frozen embryos to save them from scientific research said 14 women were pregnant with adopted embryos.

The Barcelona clinic launched a scheme last year to allow embryos left over from fertility treatment and destined for stem cell research to be implanted into women.

Tens of thousands of embryos are currently frozen in and the launch of the program coincided with the government allowing scientists to use them for research.

The Institut Marques said couples who had lost a child, infertile couples, and single and homosexual women were among those who had decided to have an embryo implanted.

But there were also women who wanted to save the frozen embryo from being used in scientific research.

"There are also couples who already have children and for ethical reasons consider this a new kind of parenthood, to provide a solution for a leftover embryo and avoid its use in research," Dr. Olga Serra, head of the program said in a note.

Infertile couples can already receive embryos from other couples but they tend to ask for embryos with certain characteristics, such as race or hair color.

This scheme -- which the Barcelona clinic says is the first of its kind -- aims to find parents for the embryos, not babies to couples' specifications.

The clinic said about a third of the people who had shown an interest in the embryo adoption program were from outside Spain, with most coming from France, Italy and Portugal. Reuters 20050228