Mohamed Taranissi, Britain's most controversial fertility doctor, has again been named as its most successful by the government regulator that recently sought to ban him from running his clinic.

The doctor’s Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre (ARGC) in London had the highest success rate of any British clinic in 2006, according to figures published today by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

The ARGC’s live birth rate was 61 per cent for IVF patients aged under 35 who used their own eggs, almost double the national average of 31 per cent.

Mr Taranissi’s other London clinic, the Reproductive Genetics Institute (RGI), took second place in the league table, with a success rate of 50 per cent for the same patient group.

The results are embarrassing for the HFEA, which has been engaged in a long disciplinary action against Mr Taranissi over claims that he treated patients at the RGI without the correct licence during 2006.

Last year, the watchdog declared the doctor unfit to be in charge of the ARGC, but it annulled the ruling last month after a legal challenge. The High Court also found that the HFEA used unlawful warrants to search the two clinics last January.

The results published for the RGI today cover the period during which Mr Taranissi is alleged to have been practising there without the proper licence. There had been doubt whether the data would be issued at all.

Critics of Mr Taranissi claim that he has achieved his high success rate by transferring multiple embryos. Mr Taranissi's two clinics figure highly in the table for multiple births, which are the biggest side-effect of IVF treatment.

The ARGC has a high multiple birth rate, with 32 per cent of pregnancies producing twins and 68 per cent singletons.

Mr Taranissi says that his high twin rate is a result of a higher implantation rate in general, and attributes his success to round-the-clock patient care and high clinical standards.

The new HFEA figures show that the total number of women having successful IVF topped 10,000 for the first time in 2006. There were 10,242 births resulting in 12,596 babies, an increase of 13.1 per cent on 2005.

Live birth rates for all patients rose from 21.6 per cent to 23.1 per cent. This compares to a success rate of 13 per cent in 1992, the first year for which the HFEA collected data.

The overall number of women treated also rose by 6.8 per cent, to 34,855 patients, who had a total of 44,275 cycles of treatment.

The rate of multiple births fell from 24 per cent of successful pregnancies to 22.7 per cent, as clinics have been increasingly encouraged to transfer a single embryo for suitable patients.

The number of donor insemination procedures conducted, however, fell by 28 per cent, with 4,225 treatments carried out in 2006 compared with 5,865 in 2005. This reflects a decline in the numbers of men willing to donate sperm for multiple uses, since the Government removed donors’ right to remain anonymous.

Professor Lisa Jardine, Chair of the HFEA, said: “In the year that we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the birth of the world´s first IVF baby, these latest figures show just how far we´ve come. IVF is now commonplace, with the number of treatment cycles and births rising yet again.

“A key function of the HFEA is to be an information resource, helping to guide people through their treatment journeys and giving them the information they need to feel properly informed about the choices they are making.

“We are currently at the start of a consultation process that will look closely at how we might further improve the information that we publish to best capture the performance of clinics. A more sophisticated analysis of national data would be valuable to patients, clinics and the NHS.

“However, the number of donor insemination cycles and births continues to fall. While more couples are able to take advantage of techniques such as ICSI, for those patients whose treatment requires donor sperm, this is of great concern.

“The HFEA is supportive of clinics that are actively recruiting donors and we welcome the BFS Working Party proposals to introduce a national system for donor recruitment.”

Details of success rates, multiple birth rates and services offered by individual fertility clinics are available on the HFEA’s website.

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