Professor Hamamah, head of the reproductive biology department at CHU Montpellier (University Hospital Centre), plans to open a “fertility centre” he calls I2F in January 2020. The centre is hoping to attract “world champions in the medically assisted reproduction league” to treat infertile couples quickly and in the same location. The intention is to offer medically assisted reproduction to female couples and single women, anticipating a revision of the bioethics law. This centre should materialise in an “unoccupied hospital building at La Colombière”. It will be financed by “couples from the US or the Emirates who would pay up to 30,000 euros in their own country to have a child”. The research scientist continues, “Here, they will pay half as much and this will enable us to provide financial assistance for French couples”.
Professor Hamamah also wants the centre to focus on embryo research and pre-implantation diagnostics. Alain Privat, a member of the French National Academy of Medicine, is concerned by the last claim which, “without strict controls will lead directly to eugenics that is already practised in some countries where the code of ethics is questionable to say the least”. He also points out that he has worked on embryology research for nearly fifty years and reiterates that this type of research “does not need human embryos. Rodents will do and, in some specific cases, primates provide excellent models”.
La gazette de Montpellier, 4 au 10 octobre 2018