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Study Shows Fertility Patients Want Frozen Embryonic Children Buried

By Kathleen Gilbert

December 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Parents of embryos left over from the assisted reproduction process are torn on what to do with them and many welcome the idea of a "ritual disposal ceremony" to honor their remains, says a new study.

"This really turns our moral presumptions on their heads," says Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, an obstetrician/gynecologist and bioethicist at Duke, and lead investigator of the findings that appear online in Fertility & Sterility.

As each fertility treatment produces several embryos, most fertility patients choose to freeze extra embryos that were created but not implanted, to use as a possible backup. Previous studies have found that when childbearing is complete, as many as 70 percent of patients put off for five years - or more - the decision of what to do with those frozen embryos, even while they continue to pay annual storage fees.

In Lyerly's survey of 1,000 fertility patients, 20 percent of the patients who had completed childbearing indicated they were likely to freeze their remaining embryonic children "forever."

In the survey, the researchers presented four embryo disposition options: thawing and discarding; reproductive donation; indefinite freezing; and donation for research. The majority were unlikely to choose any of these options except for one: research donation.  But Lyerly says that donating to science wouldn't solve the apparently deep-seated difficulty parents face in deciding how to dispose of their embryonic children.

"For many of these patients, the need to make a decision about disposing these embryos is not discussed up front. Understandably, fertility patients have hard times thinking about destroying their embryos when they are emotionally and financially invested in trying to make a baby," she says.

Two methods that were considered somewhat acceptable by about 20 percent of the fertility patients were placement of embryos in a woman's body at an infertile time, and the idea of a ritual disposal ceremony.

Yet, Lyerly says these alternatives are rarely offered to patients even though "these may be the answers to many patients' desires as they allow the embryos to pass in a way that seems most respectful to them."

A 2004 study reported by the Associated Press revealed the manifold ways U.S. in vitro fertilization clinics dispose of frozen embryos, astonishing researchers with the reverence many felt obligated to show the tiny human lives.

Several clinics performed a "quasi-religious" ceremony, including a prayer, before destroying each embryo; others cultured each embryo in a lab dish to let it flourish for a few moments before death.  Various policies governed the parents' involvement in the embryo's moment of death, with some insisting their presence and others refusing or discouraging access to the room.

There are approximately half a million embryos frozen in suspended animation across the United States.

See related LifeSiteNews.com articles:

Oregon Court Orders Frozen Embryos Destroyed, Considered "Property Rights" Issue
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08101008.html

“Embryos are Humans” Says U.S. Government Report on Stem Cell Research
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011009.html

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