By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
One of the largest studies ever conducted examining fertility patient’s attitude toward the disposition of their stored frozen embryos shows most couples are very conflicted about what to do with them.
“The prevailing view in the philosophical debate about this issue is that patients who care about their embryos will choose to donate them to another couple, but this is not how patients often see it,” said Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, lead investigator of the findings that appear online in Fertility and Sterility.
“Patients may care very much about what happens to their embryos,” Dr. Lyerly told WebMD, “but that doesn’t meant they want them to become children.”
The Duke University Medical Center ob-gyn and bioethicist surveyed 1,000 fertility patients and found that 20 percent of the patients who had completed their childbearing said they were likely to keep their embryos frozen “ forever.”
Another thirty-six percent of these patients said they were likely to thaw and destroy the embryos. Only 34 percent said they were somewhat or very likely to donate the embryos to another infertile couple.
Two out of three patients (66%) who wanted no more children said they would be somewhat or very likely to donate the embryos for research. That was almost twice as many as said they might donate the embryos to infertile couples. But the decision to allow their embryos to be destroyed by research is not an easy one.
“For many of these patients, the need to make a decision about disposing these embryos is not discussed up front. Understandably, fertility patients have hard times thinking about destroying their embryos when they are emotionally and financially invested in trying to make a baby,” she says.
Two methods that were considered somewhat acceptable by about 20 percent of the fertility patients were placement of embryos in a woman’s body at an infertile time, and the idea of a ritual disposal ceremony.
Unfortunately, Lyerly says these alternatives are rarely offered to patients even though “these may be the answers to many patients’ desires as they allow the embryos to pass in a way that seems most respectful to them.”
According to LifeSiteNews, a 2004 study reported by the Associated Press revealed the manifold ways U.S. in vitro fertilization clinics dispose of frozen embryos, astonishing researchers with the reverence many felt obligated to show the tiny human lives.
Several clinics performed a “quasi-religious” ceremony, including a prayer, before destroying each embryo; others cultured each embryo in a lab dish to let it flourish for a few moments before death. Various policies governed the parents’ involvement in the embryo’s moment of death, with some insisting their presence and others refusing or discouraging access to the room.
There are approximately half a million frozen embryos presently being stored in clinics across the United States.
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