Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : MISCELLANY / NEWSMAKERS AND MILESTONES

Last month, an Ecuadorean who entered menopause when she was about 20 years old gave birth in Houston to a healthy, full-term baby boy after becoming pregnant via a new procedure using eggs donated by another woman, an infertility expert announced this week.

This November, the second such birth may take place in Garden Grove, where Dr. Ricardo Asch plans to open an office. But this second case involves twins, believed to be the first multiple births in the world achieved with donated eggs, said Asch’s associate, Dr. Jose Balmaceda.

While about a dozen other “test-tube” babies have been born throughout the world using donated eggs, Asch’s technique allows the donated egg to be fertilized, not in a laboratory dish, but in the body of the woman who gives birth.

The technique, Asch said, is “no different (in concept) from artificial insemination, only in reverse.”

The new procedure may make it possible for women to store eggs for future conception, as men now can store sperm in sperm banks, Asch said.

The procedure involves extracting eggs from the woman’s ovaries and combining them with the man’s sperm. Minutes later, the egg-sperm mixture is injected back into the same woman’s Fallopian tubes, where the fertilization process is allowed to occur naturally.