Last week, I blogged about the Ochsner Hospital in Louisiana, which has indefinitely suspended operations at its in vitro fertilization center in Elmwood because of a mix-up in the labeling of frozen embryos. Approximately 100 couples may be affected by the labeling errors, and two class action lawsuits have been filed against Ochsner so far.
It has now been reported that Ochsner can't find four missing embryos belonging to one couple that the fertility clinic froze more than two years ago, and two embryos belonging to another couple have disappeared. Ochsner insists that, although frozen embryos were systematically mislabeled, none have been transferred into the wrong patient.
I also blogged about Carolyn Savage, an Ohio woman who gave birth to a boy (which she delivered to the child’s genetic parents) after the Ohio fertility clinic where she underwent in vitro fertilization transferred another couple's embryos into her uterus.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) executive director Robert W. Rebar has released the following statement regarding the recent embryo mix-ups. The statement appears to suggest that ASRM intends to work with lawmakers to develop laws to supplement existing industry self-regulation, although it is vague about what form such laws may take:
Even with these [ASRM industry self-regulation] efforts, the incidents reported this week make it clear that there is still work to do. As the leaders in reproductive medicine, we will redouble our efforts to develop systems that will assure our patients and the public that these kinds of mistakes will not happen.
The time has come for policy makers to sit down with the leading experts in the field to explore ways we can codify our standards to give them additional regulatory teeth.
We will lead an effort involving our members, representatives of patient groups, policy makers and other stakeholders to work together to come up with solutions.
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