Dr. Trounson has now gone one step beyond the “test-tube” fertilization technique -- first employed successfully in 1978 and since emulated in such places as the United States, South Africa, Britain itself, and Australia -- by setting up an “embryo bank” to keep a supply of frozen, fertilized eggs available indefinitely. In case the first fertilized egg failed to lead to pregnancy when transplanted back into the mother, or possibly into another women, another of the sorted eggs, which had been taken from the mother and fertilized by the father at the same time as the first, could be withdrawn from the “bank” for a second attempt.
The pioneers of successful “test-tube” births, Steptoe and Edwards, had been the first to come up with this storage idea, but they had been forced to withdraw their plan because of the controversy it aroused. The problem in both countries was, of course, one of morality although that should not be taken to imply that there is necessarily more morality in Great Britain than in Australia. The concern has been that the embryo bank might be exploited by the unscrupulous or that conception might precede birth by nine or even 90 years rather than by nine months. As happened some years ago with heart transplants -- and will doubtless happen again - the present situation as far as embryo banks are concerned -- appears to be that “the technology has outrun the morality.”