The pinpoints of life are so tiny that they might be routinely shed flakes of skin. Typically consisting of anywhere from one to eight cells, each cluster measures no more than a fifth of a millimeter across, about the size of the period ending this sentence. Sadly, that comparison turned out to be more than a figure of speech last week in Britain, where a wholesale lot of human embryos in suspended animation came to a full stop. Under a five-year storage limit imposed by law in 1991, fertility clinics began extracting some 3,300 cell-preserving ampules from the deep freeze of liquid-nitrogen tanks. Clinicians thawed out the embryos in culture dishes, sometimes adding drops of saline solution or alcohol to assure destruction. Hundreds of potential human lives were then consigned to the trash, to be carted away with other biological waste for incineration.

The procedure was simple, but it created a commotion never anticipated when the storage deadline was enacted five years ago. For much of the British public, the world's first mass destruction of test-tube embryos carried biblical overtones of King Herod's slaughter of the innocents. The press retailed stories of heartbreaking angst as some parents tried to save their potential offspring at the last minute. Quite a few succeeded, phoning in from places as distant as continental Europe, the U.S. and Australia; for one woman whose husband is mentally ill and was not allowed to sign a consent form, however, it was not worth going public to get a court-ordered stay of execution. On the deadline's eve, a couple of dozen pro-life demonstrators assembled for a candlelight vigil in London outside Westminster Cathedral. At midnight each flame was quietly snuffed out in protest against what the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, called a "prenatal massacre."

Rhetoric like that certainly melodramatized the disposal, which most Britons could not regard as murder. The mortality rate of embryos conceived in a Petri dish is very high: in Britain, six perish for every successful pregnancy from freshly fertilized eggs and nine for every one from frozen clusters. In the majority view, to dignify with a human persona a speck of life so rudimentary was too much for common sense as well as science. Even so, the first time any society has undertaken to destroy latent human life on such a scale riveted attention. Basil Cardinal Hume, the Roman Catholic Archbishop in Britain, told the Daily Telegraph, "We are in a moral cul-de-sac. All the so-called solutions to this dilemma have severe drawbacks, and it is a question of finding the least worst."

In-vitro fertilization, or IVF, is still so young a technique that legislatures and courts have not caught up with ethical quandaries arising from it. Much debate until now has focused on famous cases in which women who donated eggs to a childless couple later claimed parental rights. If those conflicts came from a vacuum of law, last week's ruckus illustrated how the best-intentioned laws can go bad. Should embryos be destroyed at an arbitrary point simply because the parents cannot be reached? What about infertile women who would gladly accept the orphaned cells for implantation? Or a woman whose ova produced the embryos but who can't find, or get consent from, a sperm donor or an estranged partner?

Said Professor Ian Craft, director of the London Gynaecology and Fertility Center, a distinguished Harley Street clinic: "This week did not have to happen. The deadline did not have to be so rigidly followed. It was sad to get rid of these embryos, some of which might have been required by individuals within the next year." Britain was probably ripe for such a debate, given that the country pioneered IVF and resorts to the procedure today at a per capita rate that is among the world's highest. To avoid repeated surgery for egg removals, up to half a dozen ova at a time are usually fertilized in IVF attempts, against the chance that the first implantations will fail. The "spare" embryos--or in some cases simply fertilized eggs that have not begun to divide--are preserved indefinitely in most countries, as they used to be in Britain. But as the national stock of refrigerated life-forms began swelling out of control, Parliament ordained the culling of unclaimed and legally unusable micro-mortals after a reasonable time. The law went into effect on Aug. 1, 1991, when the countdown began for all embryos frozen up to that time.

Last May the government allowed an extension of storage terms up to 10 years if both parents in every case provided "written and informed consent." What the government did not expect, either five years or three months ago, was the number of parents who would remain incommunicado. Without their express wish to donate the cells for adoption or research, about 3,300 potential infants landed in a limbo where the law dictated that they must be destroyed. For the 9,000 frozen embryos fertilized between 1985 and 1991, some 6,000 sets of parents gave their decisions. In around 910 cases, though, one or both parents could not be traced or contacted. Clinics waged heroic efforts to get a response from the missing donors, sending up to three registered letters apiece to 260 pairs.

Remarked Lynn Ellis, coordinator of Craft's Harley Street center: "I don't know whether it's just human nature--that some people don't want to face making a decision and put it on a back burner." She emphasized, however, that "it's their responsibility, and we can only do the best we can to find them." Stressing again what he considered the deadline's arbitrariness, director Craft argued, "There should be compassion. I would accept that once you have a baby from test-tube treatment, you tend to forget the ones sitting in the freezer."

What else could be done, in the absence of consent? Catholic doctrine did not prove very helpful, since the Vatican condemns test-tube fertilization in the first place and absolutely denounces research using embryos. The best idea the church could offer was Cardinal Hume's preference for "dignified" disposal--allowing the embryos to thaw and perish naturally, accompanied by some devotions. Sharply different views came from a number of infertile would-be British parents, such as Joanna and Stephen Thomas of Cornwall. Said Stephen: "These lives are in suspension in an icy tomb. In this messy ethical problem, I've concluded that the rights of the individual who's been brought into existence are paramount over and above those of parents, doctors or scientists."

Other countries have not faced the issue. American clinics set their own policies, following the guidelines of ethics panels. Germany simply forbids freezing embryos, except when an ill mother cannot accept immediate implantation. France in 1994 set a five-year deadline but provided for review of the law before then. A review will probably be needed. As one German Euro-M.P., Evelyne Gebhardt, put it, "Embryos are not special waste and can't be treated as such." If Britain's example is anything to judge by, many people everywhere are very uneasy with the idea of dictated destruction of human life, however primitive and miniature.

--Reported by Helen Gibson and Nina Planck/London