Leftover embryos

[Anonymous]

After many years of trying we used donor and had 13 embryos left over. We never could decide what to do and put it off forever. Finally just discarded after 10 years. Crazy. But we never did all the testing for donation etc etc.

[Anonymous]

posted today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/health/embryo-adoption-donated-snowflake.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How much does it cost to store embryos?

Depends on facility, but it's always more when the RE stores them as they have limited space. If you do very long term storage b/c you don't plan to use them, you can transfer to an off-site facility (often a farm-type set up) which can significantly reduce costs. OP said her fees were $500/yr. I can't remember how much I'm paying, but I think it was similar.

Ours are at Fairfax Cryobank along with the sperm and we pay $40/month. If you prepay for a year or five years, it's cheaper.

[Anonymous]

I struggle with this weekly. We have seven embryos left. We had three children from this “batch.” I did not have them
tested but they are from when I was 29.

I pay the storage fee just because ...

I am not interested in donation- but probably will discard once I’m completely out of a child bearing age

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I struggle with this weekly. We have seven embryos left. We had three children from this “batch.” I did not have them
tested but they are from when I was 29.

I pay the storage fee just because ...

I am not interested in donation- but probably will discard once I’m completely out of a child bearing age

I've been in this position, and felt guilty about the financial waste from discarding/thawing out embryos. It seems like a lot of money to essentially throw away.

We spent A LOT of money on IVF (probably around $50K), and not using the embryos seems wasteful.

[Anonymous]

I saw the NYT article posted above. I recently posted this link from SG's Eric Widra about their embryo donation program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtuvKDy7i3U

I really love Eric Widra and also appreciate that SG is attempting to set up a program that - in contrast to the programs mentioned in the NYT article - is nearly completely bias-free. (SG has an age-limit policy that I disagree with.)

There are important ethical objections to anonymous embryo donation programs that weren't addressed in the interview linked above. For example, at least with the SG program, there are likely already full biological siblings of these embryos. I worry that the interests of a future donor-conceived child are not centered in these discussions. GW Law Professor Naomi Cahn has written books and articles about this. These are very difficult issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in a similar situation but have decided to donate them for research. Just curious why you’d rather destroy them?

You have literally no idea if research could hurt them. I hadn’t even thought about that until recently.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by "hurt them"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are in a similar situation but have decided to donate them for research. Just curious why you’d rather destroy them?

You have literally no idea if research could hurt them. I hadn’t even thought about that until recently.

There are ethics guidelines and regulations for how developed you can allow an embryo to get during research. I don't remember the limits, but it's very early, maybe a couple weeks. They're still masses of minimally differentiated cells at that point. I don't think people are terrible for not donating embryos for sentimental reasons, but the research isn't hurting them in the sense that the embryos would feel any sort of pain - or anything else.