Two American fertility clinics reported freezers failing last month, and had thawed to an undisclosed degree. This rare event shocked hundreds of patients who were storing embryos, eggs and ovarian tissue. Maybe it was the equipment that failed or a human error, but responsibility rests on the shoulders of clinics except for major fires or criminal intent out of their control. These freezers have electronic alarms. When Lucinda was managing Cornell’s IVF laboratory she could be called automatically on her cell phone if liquid nitrogen levels fell to critical levels. It never happened. She knew the danger because there can be no recovery for cells that thaw improperly.
A tank may contain over a thousand frozen eggs and embryos. To patients, they are prospective children waiting for the day when they will be called by their parents. Some women can repeat IVF treatment to replace their loss, but not everyone because fleeting years of female fertility soon rob them of the chance to be new mothers of their genetic children. I chose another hard case for my example, who came through a tunnel called cancer to renewed health, but she lost her next best hope from a plunge in temperature. Money from a lawsuit is no compensation to warm this kind of chilled heart.
I’ve clicked ‘like’, but I don’t ‘like’… This is every embryologist’s nightmare, and I was having a conversation about tank alarms with someone just two weeks ago, who denied it could ever happen. (Previous experience tells me otherwise.) Heartbreaking news…