LONDON, July 8: A historic legal battle was brewing in Britain as a newspaper reported on Monday that a white couple had had black twins as the result of a mistake during fertility treatment.

The couple will be at the centre of a court case this autumn to decide who should be considered the babies’ real parents, in the first reported case of its kind in Britain.

The mix-up involves a black couple also trying for a test-tube baby at the same time, The Sun newspaper reported, quoting a source at the authority which runs the fertility clinic involved.

No confirmation was available from health officials, who instead swiftly circulated a gagging order imposed on them by the High Court.

The injunction also forbade naming the two sets of parents involved or the clinic.

Experts say a mistake could have occurred in one of three ways in the IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) process, which involves fertilising an egg with sperm before implanting the resulting embryo — often two or three at a time — in the woman’s womb.

The wrong sperm could have been used to fertilise the right egg, the right sperm could have been used to fertilise the wrong egg, or the embryo implanted in the woman may have been another couple’s altogether.

“It’s our worst nightmare,” said Sonya Jerkovic, in charge of the London Fertility Centre’s laboratory. “It’s something we think about all the time.”

She admitted mistakes could happen, despite checks at her clinic including colour-coding of samples and having two technicians present at every stage in the process.

“Embryos all look the same,” she added.—Reuters