Largest study of fertility patients shows concerns about embryo d...( DURHAM NC -- Fertility patients who ...),Health

DURHAM, NC -- Fertility patients who are done having children feel responsible for the stored, frozen embryos left over from their treatment, yet more than half are against implanting the embryos in anyone else, according to a new study by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

"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.

"Parents care very much about what happens to their embryos, but that doesn't mean they want them to become children. Our study shows that many feel they have to do what they can to prevent their embryo from becoming a child."

The survey of more than 1,000 fertility patients is the largest and only multi-site study to shed important light on the state of the nation's 500,000 frozen embryos currently in storage. It reveals previously unexplored concerns that patients have about their embryos, and it comes at a time when several states and even the federal government are attempting to enact legislation that would either assert an embryo is a person, allow abandoned embryos to be adopted by another couple, or allow unused embryos to become "wards of the state."

What to do with those unused embryos has also become a sticking point for providers, since they are held responsible for safe storage or disposition of apparently abandoned embryos.

Fresh embryos are used in more than 80% of fertility treatment cycles, but most patients also choose to freeze some embryos that were created but not implanted, to use as a possible backup. This means that extra embryos often remain after treatment is completed. 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 continu
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