Friday Legal Updates - The Trials & Tribulations of International Family Building

This story from the United Kingdom is another reason why you need to do your research and make sure you understand the differences in the laws regarding infertility treatment before you decide to undergo treatment abroad.

It has been discovered that a clinic in Spain has donated hundreds of embryos leftover from previous IVF treatments without the consent of the British couples who created those embryos. The “clinic runs an 'embryo adoption scheme' where spare embryos are donated to other women if the couple who created them do not know what they want to do with them or do not respond to correspondence from the clinic.”

“The 'embryo adoption programme' at the Institut Marques clinic on the outskirts of Barcelona was started in 2004 and is thought to have been the first of its kind.” It is believed that about one third of the British couples treated at the clinic do not know what to do with their leftover embryos. Based on this estimation, out of 317 British couples treated since 2004, 114 did not decide what to do and their embryos were adopted. “The clinic writes to patients every year giving them the options to donate the embryos to other patients, donate them for research, keep them for their own future use or discard them. But in many cases the letters from the clinic go unanswered.”

The clinic tries to assign the embryo to a couple who does not live in the same country or region as the biological parents in order to minimize the chance of two siblings meeting. The clinic estimates that more than 460 babies have been born across the world as a result of their international embryo adoption scheme.

The laws in Britain would not allow an embryo adoption scheme like this “as patients must give their explicit consent to their embryos being adopted, or used in research or destroyed.” However, in Spain a scheme like this is perfectly legal and the anonymity laws in Spain prevent the resulting children from discovering who their biological parents are. In Britain, the resulting children are allowed to trace their biological parents and siblings once they turn 18.

Susan Seenan from patients group, Infertility Network, stated “Although many patients do have a good experience of treatment abroad, we have always maintained that before making a decision patients need to make themselves aware of the laws in that country which may be very different from the regulated system here in the UK.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7902308/Hundreds-of-IVF-emb...