How to donate human embryos?
July 15, 2011 2:55 PM Subscribe
How to go about donating IVF human embryos to science?
My partner and I are going through a round of IVF (going well - thanks for asking!) Of the 12 eggs extracted, 11 fertilized, and 8 of those are good embryos at this stage. Realistically based on the statistics explained to us, we expect to have at most 3 "keepers" for transfer/storage for other rounds....with the remaining embryos likely not suitable for implantation.
We'd love to do something for science with the embryo's that don't make the cut, most likely by donating them for stem cell research, etc. What better way to celebrate those embryos and make sure they have a true purpose!
Obviously we need to talk about this with our IVF clinic...(which will happen tomorrow - at our day 3 check-in)...so any input on how to donate them to science/where to donate/experiences of others etc would be wonderful so we can discuss with our clinic.
We may have left this too late - we didn't think about this till we started getting numbers from our round, but we really want to do the maximum good we can from our IVF cycle. We do have long term storage agreements for spare embryos already arranged and consents signed for storage, etc.
(Also, if we do end up with spare "good" embryo's we'll be putting them on www.miracleswaiting.org in a heartbeat...)
My partner and I are going through a round of IVF (going well - thanks for asking!) Of the 12 eggs extracted, 11 fertilized, and 8 of those are good embryos at this stage. Realistically based on the statistics explained to us, we expect to have at most 3 "keepers" for transfer/storage for other rounds....with the remaining embryos likely not suitable for implantation.
We'd love to do something for science with the embryo's that don't make the cut, most likely by donating them for stem cell research, etc. What better way to celebrate those embryos and make sure they have a true purpose!
Obviously we need to talk about this with our IVF clinic...(which will happen tomorrow - at our day 3 check-in)...so any input on how to donate them to science/where to donate/experiences of others etc would be wonderful so we can discuss with our clinic.
We may have left this too late - we didn't think about this till we started getting numbers from our round, but we really want to do the maximum good we can from our IVF cycle. We do have long term storage agreements for spare embryos already arranged and consents signed for storage, etc.
(Also, if we do end up with spare "good" embryo's we'll be putting them on www.miracleswaiting.org in a heartbeat...)
I did mine at Cornell; you only had to check a box on the consent forms for research when you were initially enrolled to make this happen. It may be that if you are not at a big academic center, they won't take them due to not knowing precisely about the protocol used or things like that. However, if you do wind up with unusable embryos and you want to donate them, it wouldn't hurt to ask the nearest major research university that has a teaching hospital with a fertility clinic if it's not clear from the clinic.
posted by Maias at 5:11 PM on July 15, 2011
posted by Maias at 5:11 PM on July 15, 2011
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posted by AlliKat75 at 3:10 PM on July 15, 2011