DOCTORS in the US have successfully performed an experiment where a woman has given birth after being implanted with eggs that had been frozen. Up till now, doctors in the US have been able to produce pregnancies from frozen embryos which meant eggs fertilised with sperm and then frozen but eggs alone were considered too fragile to freeze. This experiment could give women some new reproductive options.

"This stretches the reproductive field as far as you can envision it right now," said Joe Massey, cofounder of Atlanta-based reproductive biology associates, which performed this experiment. The same clinic in 1993, had produced the first baby in the US using sperm injected directly into a woman's egg.

The experiment was conducted on a 39-year-old woman who suffered from premature ovarian failure, which caused her to go through menopause early.