Carabinieri police on Friday arrested controversial fertility doctor Severino Antinori on charges of forcibly removing a woman's eggs at his Milan fertility clinic, Matris.
The eggs were allegedly removed without patient consent from a 24-year-old Spanish national while she was being ostensibly treated for an ovarian cyst.
The woman told police she was bound, sedated, forced to undergo removal of her eggs and deprived of her cell phone throughout. She called police from a clinic phone while staff were momentarily distracted.
Also on Friday, police seized embryos they say are the result of the Spanish victim's stolen eggs. Antinori had them fertilized, and intended to implant the resulting embryos in one of his patients, police said.
Antinori has been placed under investigation for aggravated robbery and bodily harm, and has been barred from practicing medicine for a year. Two of his close aides have been banned from living in Milan and Rome, sources said.
Antinori shot to fame in the early 1990s when he helped a 62-year-old Italian woman give birth using fertility treatment with a donated egg. In 2006, he gave in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment to a 62-year-old English woman, child psychiatrist Patricia Rashbrook, who became Britain's oldest mother when she delivered a healthy baby boy.
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