Embryos Stored at Fertility Clinics Destroyed, Suits Filed

The University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center’s Fertility Center in Cleveland, Ohio, has notified about 700 patients that their eggs or embryos may have been damaged because a tank they were stored lost liquid nitrogen, which caused the temperature control to fail. According to the Washington Post, this was the second fertility clinic in a week that suffered a catastrophic failure resulting in embryo and egg destruction. The Ohio failure has already resulted in the filing of lawsuits, which will probably combine into a class action. No suits have been filed in the second failure, at a clinic in San Francisco, but they will be soon. The number of embryos in cold storage has increased rapidly, and fertility experts say it is probably well over 1 million today. Officials at the College of American Pathologists, which accredits fertility laboratories, said they were aware of incidents in which frozen eggs and embryos had been thawed accidentally, but that such events tended to be small scale. They said the malfunctions in Cleveland and San Francisco were “extremely rare.” Both clinics had passed rigorous biannual inspections.