Professor Trounson said that cloning human embryos had potential for curing diseases but was "inefficient" and would need too many human eggs. Furthermore, it necessarily involved the destruction of embryos and "that disturbs some people". He believes that the way ahead is "induction of tolerance" -- or tricking the body into accepting transplants of cells derived from human embryonic stem cells with a different genetic make-up.

Last year's long and vigorous public debate appears to have wearied the point man for the embryo research team. It was hard enough to get access to frozen embryos, he indicated, without continuing to do battle for an inefficient technology.

Women's fertility actually begins to decline in their late 20s, not their early 30s. Compounding the problem is the recent discovery that male fertility also declines with age. However, women are waiting longer and longer to begin their families. In Scotland, for the first time last year, more women in their early 30s had babies than women in their late 20s.