Infertility patients caught in the legal, moral and scientific embryo debate

Written by Steve Masler, CEO of Fertility SOURCE Companies

The Los Angeles Times of Monday, October 6 includes several articles about the dilemma facing the fertility world regarding its accumulation of about (at present) 500,000 frozen embryos. Though the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) permits fertility practices to discard abandoned embryos after five years of storage, no fertility practice has seen fit to implement such an unapproved (by the relevant IVF patient) destruction of embryos.

The articles go on to discuss adoption and research alternatives for frozen embryos. The articles indicate that though there is wide spread support for donation of embryos to research on the part of fertility patients, practical matters make such research donation difficult to achieve in most cases, and in many states.

The articles do not discuss another alternative approach to the frozen embryo dilemma. That is the fertilization of frozen eggs in lieu of using fresh eggs for IVF procedures. When eggs are frozen after being retrieved in an IVF procedure, only a select number need be fertilized with the rest retained in a frozen egg bank. Few, if any, people question that a frozen egg is in any way a potential person. Rather it is viewed as a gamete that is not complete toward forming a human. Ultimate destruction of excess frozen eggs, if any, is apt to be much more accepted than destruction of frozen embryos.

The technology of egg freezing has been dramatically improving in recent years as to its chances for successful pregnancies and births. As the technology improves even more, the emotional benefits of avoiding an excess of frozen embryos is apt to cause the procedure to become much more prevalent.

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Infertility patients caught in the legal, moral and scientific embryo debate