While the Infertility Support Groups welcomed news of Prof Gosden's breakthrough on the transplantation of ovarian tissue, Irish doctors were more cautious.
Dr John E. Drumm, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Coombe Women's Hospital, Dublin, saw the procedure as "fraught with ethical problems". He said he had not read the research paper, but noted that Prof Gosden's patient had her own ovaries frozen ahead of the procedure. This meant her case was relatively free of ethical problems.
However, in other cases one woman's ovaries would have to be transplanted into another. This, he said, could be interpreted to mean that the second woman was having someone else's baby.
"What would happen if you were to have an ovary transplant from another woman who had herself a son, and you had a daughter. You could have a case where 20 years down the line a brother and sister are falling in love," he said.
Dr Roger Derham, a specialist in the menopause at Galvia Private Hospital, Renmore, Co Galway, predicted practical problems rather than ethical ones.
"Traditionally we are told that ovaries do not freeze well in that there is often genetic damage," he said. "We see that when we freeze ovaries of people who are about to undergo chemotherapy [which can damage ovaries]."
He saw "the usual problems with any type of tissue graft" in that grafted ovarian tissue may be rejected by the second woman's body.
Also, he said, if cancer were to develop in grafted ovarian tissue, it would develop far more aggressively than a cancer developing in a woman's own ovaries.
A spokeswoman for the Infertility Support Group said she did not think it would ever be allowed in Ireland, but welcomed anything that would help infertile couples hoping to have a baby.
