Deputies from the Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament, want to look into the circumstances surrounding the dumping of more than two hundreds human embryos in Russia’s Urals, Izvestia daily said on Tuesday referring to deputy Olga Batalina.
Several barrels containing 248 human embryos aged 12-16 weeks were discovered in a remote forest gully in Russia’s Urals on Monday. Local residents came across the plastic barrels in the woods in the Sverdlovsk region, local police spokesman Valery Gorelykh said.
Lids of the barrels were unlocked and many embryos no longer than 15 centimeters, spilled out. The barrels were labelled with what police believe were registration numbers of the mothers and the hospital units.
The embryos were medical waste from several clinics in the regional capital Yekaterinburg, scheduled for destruction by an unspecified company which has apparently neglected its duties, regional authorities said in a statement.
“I hope that the Investigation Committee will establish where this happened: in what residential area, in which hospital and who organized these criminal activities,” Batalina, who is the First Deputy Chair of Duma’s Women, Family and Children Committee, told Izvestia.
“And then, Duma deputies and the Health Ministry should draw the necessary conclusions and hold an investigation of their own, and establish why this became possible and what should be done to prevent the killings of unborn children at a legal level,” Batalina said.
Earlier a special commission to look into the case was developed in the Health Ministry. The commission has been requested to determine which companies provide embryo disposal services to local hospitals.