Older women, as a result of deciding to freeze their own eggs when younger will, as a result, find it much easier to give birth to those thawed eggs after menopause.

This development portends to be of extraordinary importance to women who may wish to delay childbirth until they have grown, self-recognizably, in wisdom and experience.

Scientists from around the world are now congratulating the Atlanta researchers—a team led by Dr. Michael Tucker.

Reproductive Biology Associates, an Atlanta firm, has been host to this embryologist's cutting edge work. Asian and Australian researchers are said to have effected successful pregnancies from frozen eggs a decade ago, but that methodology was not repeated.

Researchers in Bologna, Italy are said to have helped produce a baby girl born from an egg that had been frozen for four months and fertilized thereafter.

Women who choose to put child-rearing off until a later stage in life now have an unparalleled option, to freeze their own eggs and then wait until a such a time that offers their newborns apropos physical and emotional surroundings in which to thrive.

The results produced by Dr. Tucker's team were described this weekend at a meeting of the American Society for Assisted Reproduction in Cincinnati. The success of the team's research is said to be cause for celebration among infertility experts.

Informed of the success of the Atlantans, the editor of Fertility and Sterility (Dr. Alan DeChurney, an infertility expert at the University of California) said, "They're a credible group—they definitely did it. If this can be repeated, it's a breakthrough."

The latest results from frozen egg research were effected because of an advanced technique employed—intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or I.C.S.I., fertilizing an egg by injecting sperm directly into it. Experience has shown that sperm will not penetrate eggs that have been frozen and thawed.

Dr. Tucker is now providing a four-year accounting of how he has finally achieved successful pregnancies using frozen eggs. In the late 1980s, he says, most researchers dropped frozen egg studies because of a report that freezing mouse eggs damaged fragile chromosomes containing the genes.

Dr. Tucker has credited perseverance as an explanation for his team's now-proven abilities. They played with each of the numerous freezing steps until their method showed their desired effects.

Next, egg/ sperm donors were needed, as well as general approval of the idea by an ethics panel. The donors, an infertile couple to whom was offered in vitro fertilization, were told the process would cost them nothing. They signed an agreement to donate eggs that were immediately injected with the husband's sperm and which they knew would be frozen.

Sixteen of the donor's eggs seemed particularly healthy and were chosen for placement in a recipient. Of those sixteen eggs, eleven turned into embryos and two were implanted in the recipient who, thereafter, gave birth to two healthy boys. The remaining embryos were frozen for future use.