Italian fertility doctor arrested

ROME: A pioneering Italian gynaecologist best known for helping women in their 60s to have babies has been arrested on suspicion of removing eggs from a patient without her consent.
Severino Antinori, 70, was arrested at Rome’s Fiumicino airport following a complaint filed by a 24-year-old Spanish woman who was being treated for an ovarian cyst at Milan clinic run by the specialist, police said.
Antinori has had his license to practice gynaecology provisionally suspended for a year and been placed under house arrest in Rome on charges of aggravated robbery and causing personal injury, the agency reported.
The alleged victim was a Spanish national with a nursing qualification who had recently begun working at the clinic.
Prosecutors allege that Antinori, who had met the woman by chance, set up the job interview and subsequently diagnosed the ovarian cyst with the sole intention of harvesting her eggs without her knowledge.
The woman says she had her mobile phone taken off her before being forcibly immobilized, placed under anaesthetic and operated on without her consent. She believed she was only going to be treated by injection for the cyst, according to her lawyer.
The investigation was triggered by the woman calling emergency services from a payphone after she came round from the surgery.