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Controversy surrounds Japan's first surrogate birth The baby was born in Nagano prefecture, west of Tokyo, to a woman acting as a surrogate for her elder sister who is unable to bear children because she has had a hysterectomy, Dr Yahiro Netsu said on Saturday. The gynaecologist, head of a maternity clinic, has kept secret the identities of all those involved as well as the date of the birth and the sex of the baby. An egg was taken from the infertile woman, fertilised using her husband's sperm and then implanted into the surrogate mother's womb. Surrogacy is not illegal in Japan, although a panel of experts issued a report in December strongly recommending that the practice be banned. The Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry plans to prepare a bill in line with this recommendation for submission to parliament within three years. In the meantime, the ministry has asked doctors not to carry out surrogacy procedures. A ministry spokesman was quoted in Japanese newspapers as saying the doctor's decision to go ahead with the procedure had been "extremely regrettable". Netsu was unapologetic. "I don't know how you could stop a self-sacrificing person like the sister," Kyodo news agency quoted him as telling a news conference at his clinic on Saturday. "If the ministry insists on banning the practice, it should take away my medical licence, so I won't be tormented" by having to take such decisions, he said. Netsu said this was the first successful attempt of five had made to produce a surrogate baby through in-vitro fertilisation. Netsu is no stranger to controversy. He was expelled in 1998 from the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology after revealing that he had carried out in-vitro fertilisations for unmarried couples, a procedure banned by the society. Newspapers were fiercely critical of the surrogate birth. "We should speed up the process of making this illegal," read a headline in the conservative Sankei Shimbun. "Surrogate motherhood brings about all sorts of problems, so it should not be allowed," said the Mainichi Shimbun, pointing out that disputes could arise over the child's true identity. Tsutomu Araki, chairman of the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, told the Yomiuri Shimbun: "It is questionable whether the baby will be able to receive the support it needs, because the country is unprepared to give counselling to such children and their parents." He said the society was preparing to ban its members from facilitating surrogate births. REUTERS 1147 200501 GMT 2001-05-20 19:49:31 2001-05-20 19:51:11 3020 NNNN 甅DFN屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯突 Copied to: panzm by xulan on May 20, 2001 8:00 PM 韧屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯屯籍MDNM�
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