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.
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