WHERE THE EXTRA EMBRYOS COME FROM

I was asked by a commenter on Medved's blog "Who determines what is left over?" I answered that the couples involved determined that and this article in a recent edition of USA Today gives us more information:

Each stored embryo is a stem cell debate
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
Updated 1/30/2007 4:22 PM ET

SAN DIEGO — Ingrid Jansson peers through a vapor of liquid nitrogen at frozen embryos conceived for her in a petri dish four years ago. It's the first time she's eyed the surplus from the in vitro fertilization procedure that brought her son Dylan, now 3, into the world.

"It's surreal," says Jansson, 39, as an embryologist fishes out the thin straw containing eight embryos stored at a fertility clinic where she was treated and now works as a nurse. "I don't think about them much, because I have two (children) at home that keep me busy."

As Congress renews debate about funding stem cell research using human embryos, people such as Jansson are thinking hard about what to do with excess embryos after their families are complete.

Fertility doctors create embryos by removing eggs from a woman's fallopian tubes and fertilizing them with sperm in a petri dish. Because of the pain and expense — one IVF cycle can cost up to $10,000 — and a failure rate of more than 60%, doctors routinely create more embryos than they implant in a woman's uterus. Those left over are frozen for possible use later.

Patients with frozen embryos have four options: Discard them, give them to other couples, pay hundreds of dollars a year to store them at minus-310 degrees Fahrenheit, or donate them to medical research.

University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan says many IVF clinics don't discuss embryo donation with patients because of moral concerns or confusion about what's legal. Fertility treatment, not usually covered by health insurance, "is a cash business," he says. Doctors "are very sensitive to image," noting that clinics want to avoid anything that hints at controversy.

At Weill-Cornell, "we've avoided it," says Gosden. She says 54% of her clinic's patients who have finished their families ask to have their embryos destroyed, 43% donate them to basic science unrelated to stem cells, and 3% offer them to other infertile couples.