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Controversial embryo adoption methods becoming more popular

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Posted by Franco Cignelli on May 16, 2012 at 7:41 am

Embryo AdoptionEmbryo adoption is on the rise as it can ultimately be more cost effective than egg donation.

In 2009 Andrea Alexander adopted twins. The catch is, she also gave birth to them.

Alexander’s husband is infertile, and traditional adoption wasn’t a viable option so they decided to use embryos from another family to build their own.

Alexander started researching frozen embryo donations specifically for families hoping to adopt. She contacted the religious embryo adoption agency, Snowflake, and began the process, which included a home study, a full medical background check of the donating family, and photos of their children.

Cora and Max were created in 2006, adopted in 2009 and born in 2010.

With the IVF success rate, there is a surplus of more than 600,000 frozen embryos in the United States.

Fertility patients are split over what to do with their unused embryos. According to a recent study reported on ABC News, 54% want to keep them frozen for future use, 21% want them donated to research, and 7% want them donated to another couple.

As a Catholic Alexander’s choice came with challenges, which is a dilemma many patients of faith must face and come to terms with.

The Catholic Church states that human life should not be created in a laboratory and is cautions against embryo adoption. Ultimately Alexander continued with the procedure.

She hopes to go through embryo adoption again. She has limited communication with the children’s genetic parents. At many fertility clinics, though, embryo donations are anonymous.

Posted in: Embryo Adoption
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Is Embryo Adoption a Good Solution for Premature Ovarian Failure?

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Posted by Amanda Rahi on September 29, 2011 at 9:42 am

Women faced with premature ovarian failure (POF), the loss of ovarian function before the age of 40, have very small chances of getting pregnant, and most turn to using egg donation. Embryo adoption is another pregnancy option for women with POF, but its differences from egg donation should be noted.

According to the Center of Human Reproduction “egg donation is, undoubtedly, the most successful treatment option for women with POF”. In the CHR’s egg donor program, a POF patient has been shown to have a cumulative pregnancy rate in the high 80s to low 90s, from a single egg donation cycle.

In this process, the donated eggs are fertilized with the couple’s sperm, resulting in an embryo with the genetics from the father.

On the other hand, embryo adoption, the process of implanting an already fertilized and matured embryo into the woman, does not allow the couple to have any of their genetics in their baby.

The donated embryos mostly come from couples that have conceived with IVF and have decided to donate their remaining viable embryos from the procedure. These embryos are frozen and ready for adoption.  However, these embryos come from couples that had difficulty conceiving and are thought to be of lesser quality. Between 16 to 20 percent of embryo adoptions result in successful pregnancies, whereas success rates in donor egg selection start at 60 percent and go up from there.

Two very notable advantages of embryo adoption are its immediate availability (egg donation wait times in some fertility clinics can be around one year) and its’ lower cost. Couples should expect to pay between 15,000 and 20,000 dollars for egg donation, compared to a range of 6,000 to 18,000 dollars for embryo adoption.

Families have to evaluate their personal needs to decide what option is best for them. It is important, however, to consider if accepting a lower success rate and missing out on having the genetics of the father is worth the difference in time and money.

Posted in: Embryo Adoption, POF
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Egg Donation vs. Embryo Adoption: What’s the difference?

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Posted by RobynNazarRN on September 12, 2011 at 11:41 am

Those new to infertility are often faced with many choices when it comes to infertility treatment. For women who have poor ovarian reserve or premature menopause often times egg donation or embryo adoption become two of her most viable options.

It is important to keep understand that these two infertility treatments are not synonymous to each other. They are two very different processes and therefore having varying degrees of effectiveness. Egg donation is considered the most reliable, and trusted, method of the two – but also is more of a financial investment. Embryo adoption is often more affordable, yet couples must sacrifice higher success rates and may have an increased risk for a miscarriage should a pregnancy result.

Egg Donation

Egg donation is the process of removing healthy human oocytes (eggs) from a healthy female donor to be used by another couple to try and create a pregnancy. Egg donors are selected based on health, ethnicity, and other characteristics specified by recipient couples. Once the donor is chosen, she will undergo a regimen of medications which will cause her to produce multiple eggs in a single ovulation cycle (normally women only produce one). Once these eggs are ready, they are surgically removed from the donor and fertilized in a lab setting with the recipient’s sperm. The resulting fertilized eggs are then refereed to as embryos. In a single donor cycle up to 20 embryos may be created, but only 1-3 of them are transferred into the recipient for pregnancy using IVF treatment. The remaining embryos are then frozen and saved for later use.

Embryo Adoption

Embryo adoption is the process by which a couple who has already received fertility treatment donates their remaining frozen embryos to other recipients in place of discarding them. Embryos are also matched with recipients based on desired ethnicity and other characteristics. This option is more economical because the embryos already exist, however these leftover frozen embryos tend to have a much lower success rate for pregnancy. This is because when embryos are created, they are genetically tested for abnormalities. The “healthiest” embryos are used for pregnancy and those leftover are frozen. Women who receive donor embryos are likely receiving those that were considered sub-par in quality.

Posted in: Egg Donation, Embryo Adoption
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What Is An Embryo Adoption?

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Posted by RobynNazarRN on May 6, 2011 at 1:23 pm

Embryo adoption, or the adoption of a pre-fertilized egg is a new up-and-coming form of fertility treatment has been praised by the religious as “the right thing to do”, embraced by patients who benefit from cost savings, but criticized by others as being a sham. So really, what is an embryo adoption?

The Journey of An Unwanted Embryo

Each year approximately 200,000 infertile couples undergo an assisted reproductive technology technique known as in vitro fertilization (IVF). When a women undergoes an IVF treatment procedure she is given medications to help her body mature multiple eggs. The more eggs she matures, the higher likelihood of a viable pregnancy. Once her eggs are mature enough, a doctor will remove them from her ovaries and fertilize them with her partner’s sperm in a lab setting. The result of this fertilization is embryos. Depending on how many eggs were matured during the IVF cycle, there could anywhere from 1 to 20 embryos created in total. When the doctors determine that the embryos are ready (typically 3-5 days after creation), the fertility physician examines the embryos for quality and viability (the healthiest and most likely to develop into a fetus) and selects 2 to 3 to be implanted into the mother. What to do with the embryos that were not selected then becomes the decision of the couple. They can be frozen for later use by the couples, given to be used in research, discarded, or donated to embryo banks that offer embryo adoption services.

Being “Put Up For Adoption”

There are now many fertility clinics, non-profit services, and organizations that accept adopted embryos. The most predominate of which is the Nighlight’s Snowflakes Foundation which received 1 million dollars in funding under President Bush’s administration. However, the Center for Human Reproduction was actually likely the first center to begin developing programs for embryo adoptions.

When the embryos are donated to an embryo bank the donation is usually anonymous and the donors forfeit any legal accountability they have for these embryos should a child result from one of the embryos. Once donated, the embryos are cryopreserved and stored until a recipient match is made.

All donated embryos are required by the FDA to be screened for infectious diseases such as HIV. However, any genetic testing done one the embryos to determine their chromosomal health depends on the donors and the procedures of the clinics in which the embryos were created.

More information available about the differences between egg donation and embryo adoption here: Donor Eggs vs. Embryo Adoption and Understanding the Difference.

Posted in: Embryo Adoption, IVF
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