Frozen in time ... the 'nearly people'

They are the frozen ones. There are 117,619 of them in this Britain, enough to populate a city such as Cambridge, but they cannot walk or talk, eat or even breathe.

They are living balls of human cells suspended in liquid nitrogen at sub-zero temperatures, waiting for their lives to begin again.

Lois Walker was one of them. She was conceived in October 1997, but not born until April 2000. Instead of nine months, her gestation period lasted more than two years. Lois is now 5 years old. "We sometimes say, 'You should be seven now'," says her mother, Laura Walker. "When you stop to think, it is pretty spooky."

The eight-celled embryo that would become Lois spent those 30 months in a plastic tube, stored in a metal flask in a fertility clinic. Was she alive? Did she have any rights? What should have happened if her parents had split up, and one of them didn't want a baby?

Such questions have been raised again by the bitter legal battle between an infertile woman who wants to thaw her frozen embryos for "one last chance" of pregnancy and her former boyfriend, who has refused consent.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Natallie Evans cannot use embryos she made with her Howard Johnston unless he agrees. Under UK law the embryos must be destroyed in October, when it will be five years since they were made.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which licenses and monitors the 85 clinics carrying out IVF in Britain, says there were 117,619 embryos in storage at the end of 2004. The figure may now be greater.

Embryos for use in IVF are created by mixing eggs and sperm in a petri dish. Any that fertilise are placed in an incubator for three days, during which they divide into eight cells each. They are then either implanted into the woman, or frozen and stored.

Natallie Evans was diagnosed with cancer in 2001, and her embryos were frozen before her ovaries were removed during treatment. She fought off the cancer, but also broke up with her boyfriend. They had signed the usual agreement that the embryos would not be thawed and used unless both parties agreed to it, and Johnston no longer wanted to father her child.

"There will be some people who think I am cold-hearted and my decision monstrous," the 29-year-old admitted. "But when I have a child I want to be a responsible father, not just some sperm donor who plays no part in his or her life."

Laura Walker, a 38-year-old from east London, knows how it feels to be childless - she went through 11 cycles of IVF, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. The result was Lois and her baby twin sisters, all "frosties".

"I can see the man's point of view," says Walker, "but it must be tearing [Evans] apart. How can a man hate a woman so much that he makes a decision like that?"

Hate versus love. Logic versus emotion. Man versus woman. The case has been presented in all these ways, but it is the language used to refer to the embryos that is revealing.

Almost everybody has talked as if the fight was over an actual child. In reality, the chances of Evans getting pregnant using one of the embryos is only about 14 per cent.

Science and the law both work on the basis that an embryo at this very early stage is a sub-human scrap of genetic material and only becomes a person later in its development. The majority going through IVF probably agree - it makes the procedure far less morally complicated.

But those who have been through IVF or made it happen know that even those with the clearest of minds can find personalise embryos.

"Some people ask to take home the ones that have not been used," says Andy Glew, senior embryologist at the Essex Fertility Centre. "We make sure that life has been terminated before we let them out of the building, but then we do give couples the embryos so that they can bury them in the garden, or whatever they need to do."

The laboratory at this clinic is no bigger than a domestic kitchen. The incubator resembles a fridge, and five cannisters tucked away under work surfaces contain 1500 embryos, stored in thin, transparent plastic straws.

"Some people forget that we have them," says Michael Ah-Moye, the consultant who leads the clinic. "That is one reason why we charge a fee for storage - as a reminder."

Every year around 27,800 couples in the UK have IVF, and 8800 babies are born. The baby-making industry is large but the equipment is small - the work is done in miniature.

If you allow yourself any belief, religious or instinctive, that life begins at conception, then the creation and freezing of embryos starts to feel disturbingly like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Even if these frozen ones are not deemed to be alive now, some of them will be one day - so what implications will freezing have for their futures?

The Medical Research Council says the risks of genetic damage and cancer in babies born through IVF may not be fully appreciated until more of them have grown into adulthood. The first test-tube baby was born in 1978.

Two years ago the fertility expert Lord Winston said that freezing embryos appeared to lead to changes in a gene that suppresses cancer.

None of which concerned Laura Walker very much during the 12 years she was having IVF. "I just felt like a failure because I could not have children," she says. "You get tunnel vision. You don't care about the process and you don't think about the future because it all hurts too much. You try anything, whatever the consequences, because you don't think anything is going to work."

She and her husband David began trying for a baby as soon as they got married. After two ectopic pregnancies they began the cycle of hope and despair that is IVF. One attempt costs around £3000 at a private clinic. "We didn't keep track of the money," says Laura. "I would have given up everything for a child."

Lois was eventually conceived under a scheme partly funded by the NHS. "I couldn't believe it when she was born," says her mother.

The Walkers thought it might be easier to conceive again after Lois. They were wrong. They were about to give up when a friend told them about a new method being pioneered at the Essex clinic with a much higher success rate. The embryos made from Laura's eggs were grown for five days instead of three, by which time they had divided into 200 cells.

Laura Walker now nurses her 10-week-old girls, Billie and Sydney, thanks to the new method. "All the feelings of hurt have gone. But I remember them, you know? I hurt so deeply for so long. That's why I feel for Natallie Evans so much. It does not work for everyone, but she is not even being given the chance to try."

LEFT IN THE VOID?

* A total of 117,619 embryos stored in Britain by the end of 2004.

* Every year around 27,800 couples in the UK have IVF.

* 8800 babies are born a year through the procedure.

- INDEPENDENT