In the appeal process for egg donation, the Bavarian Supreme Court pronounced its judgment: According to this, donated egg cells in the pronuclear stage may not be transferred to another woman.
The accused were the board of the association "Network Embryo Donation" and two doctors.
They were accused of violating the Embryo Protection Act as well as improper use of reproductive techniques or aiding and abetting them.
The association had unintentionally arranged egg donation for childless couples - without taking any money, as the association's founder Hans-Peter Eiden emphasized.
These were egg cells in the pronucleus and embryo stage.
They were taken from other women as part of fertility treatments and were in a sense left over.
The pronuclear stage is the point at which the sperm has penetrated the egg cell, but the two cell nuclei have not yet fused.
In Germany, only the donation of unfertilized egg cells is explicitly prohibited under the Embryo Protection Act.
The three defendants had been acquitted in two previous trials.
These judgments have now been partially overturned.
The Bavarian Supreme Court was the final instance in the matter.
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sen / dpa