Antinori acquitted, no egg trafficking

(ANSA) - Milan, July 20 - Granny birth doctor Severino Antinori was acquitted Friday of trafficking in eggs. Along with associates, he was cleared of conspiracy to trade human gametes and was sent to trial for minor offences.
    Last February a Milan court sentenced the controversial world-famous Italian gynaecologist to seven years, two months in jail for taking eight eggs from a Spanish nurse without her permission in April 2016.
    The court also suspended him from his profession for five years, six months, and convicted four other people in relation to the case, with sentences of up to five years, two months.
    It ruled that the Matris clinic where the eggs were taken must remain impounded until the definitive sentence on the case is handed down.
    The young nurse, who was being treated at the Milan clinic for an ovarian cyst, told police she was bound, sedated, forced to undergo removal of her eggs and deprived of her cell phone throughout the procedure.
    However, there is a separate case ongoing against the nurse, in which she is accused of slandering Antinori.
    Antinori, 72, became famous for the world's first 'granny births'.
    In 1994 he assisted Italian woman Rossana Della Corte, aged 63, in becoming pregnant.
    She became one of the oldest women in history to give birth.
    In May 2006 it was announced that 62-year-old East Sussex child psychiatrist, Patricia Rashbrook, was seven months pregnant after being treated by Antinori, who said that 62 or 63 was the upper limit for IVF in healthy women.
    He commented that he would only consider couples with at least 20 years' life expectancy left for fertility treatment.
    Josephine Quintavalle, from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), accused Rashbrook of selfishness and said it would be extremely difficult for a child to have a mother who is as old as a grandmother.
    In May 2009, after it was announced a 66-year-old woman was pregnant, he criticised her decision saying that he felt she was too old and may not live long enough to raise her child.