An Australian woman gave birth to a baby she had no relationship to after the embryo of another client was thawed and transferred to her. The clinic, Monash IVF in Brisbane, Australia, said that the mix-up was the result of a human error, leading to the woman giving birth to a stranger's baby. Ironically, sometimes the goal of IVF is to give birth to a stranger's baby, but in this case, it was a major problem.
Is it just me, or is this dystopian story becoming increasingly common?
Monash CEO Michael Knaap said in a statement,
All of us at Monash IVF are devastated and we apologise to everyone involved. We will continue to support the patients through this extremely distressing time.
The baby was born in 2024, but the clinic has not identified any of the parents or the child involved in the case.
It's not clear when the mix-up was discovered or who maintains custody of the child. The IVF clinic claims that its initial investigation uncovered no other similar incidents, which you can only hope is true.
In the same year the clinic paid a $35 million settlement after claims that they had destroyed healthy embryos, a practice that is usually reserved for Lebensunwertes Leben.
Thankfully this particular nightmare scenario resulted in a precious life, but the trauma inflicted on this baby even as an embryo is difficult to fathom.
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