by Kathy Clubb
Although many have woken up to the immoral nature of IVF and to its inherent risks, low effectiveness rate and exorbitant cost, some conservatives unfortunately still believe it is a feasible solution for couples suffering from infertility.
Yet, only a little research is required to discover that, even if the procedure were risk-free and morally acceptable, it would remain problematic due to the amount of human error involved. A plethora of oversights are currently plaguing the industry, placing parents in unenviable situations and making IVF a highly defective product.
Embryo mix ups at the Queensland Fertility Group
The case of a mix-up by Australia’s Queensland Fertility Group exemplifies the problem of IVF’s inherently inadequate safeguards. A white couple who requested sperm from a donor in the U.S. made their selection based on the features of the future male parent: blond hair and blue eyes. It wasn’t until the baby was born that its parents realised it was of an entirely different ethnicity from theirs: the baby is part African-American.
A recent news report on the incident, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), reveals that the mother involved wrote in an online parents forum: “I love my beautiful baby more than life itself [but] has anyone ever found out their IVF baby wasn’t theirs? Has anyone had a baby that looked like it came from [a] different ethnicity?”
The incident happened over a decade ago, but it was only recently made public as the IVF-provider and its Australian parent company, Virtus Health, ensured the scandal was kept quiet for as long as possible: the parents were made to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for a settlement, and the mix-up was not even reported to the company’s shareholders.
Additionally, an ABC investigation revealed a significant conflict of interest existing between the Queensland Fertility Group and the industry regulator, RTAC (the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee). At the time of the incident, when RTAC claimed to have no knowledge of the mix-up, its chair was the scientific director of the Queensland Fertility Group. It is beyond belief that a senior employee of the fertility-provider would have no knowledge of such a devastating mix-up; yet he told the ABC that he had “no memory” of the incident.
It appears that Queensland IVF didn’t learn from its mistakes as other mix-ups have been recently reported. Two lesbians who thought their three IVF children were related were shocked to discover that one of their boys was not related to the other two. The anomaly was revealed after genetic testing of the children was conducted for unrelated reasons. The two women are also incensed that their children are suffering from health problems, including autism, and blame Queensland IVF for failing to properly screen the donor sperm. Unfortunately, had they done their homework, the two women would have known that IVF babies are more prone to developing a number of health problems over naturally-conceived children.
Multiple errors at Monash IVF
The mistakes being made at Queensland IVF are not limited to their company alone. Melbourne-based Monash IVF has this year been forced to apologise for embryo mix-ups on two different occasions. The first incident was devastating and traumatic. A Brisbane woman found that she had given birth to a stranger’s baby after a mix-up at the IVF laboratory. A lawyer specialising in “family creation” (donor conception and surrogacy) said that while this mistake was the first of its kind to happen in Australia, it was not unheard of in other parts of the world.
The second incident occurred on June 5 at its laboratories in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton. This involved the transplant of a patient’s embryo rather than the one she had requested: the embryo belonging to her partner. Consider the ramifications of this scenario: two lesbians each have at least one embryo, and see their potential family as a sort of mix-and-match affair!
An advocate for IVF patients, Lucy Lines, said that this second incident “rocked the industry to its core”, noting that more regulation is necessary as there is no legal requirement for embryologists to be registered with a central body. But is lack of oversight the fundamental problem? Is more regulation the answer to this morally problematic industry?
Embryo experimentation
Both of these incidents follow another controversy at Monash IVF, in which it was accused of using inaccurate genetic testing which led to the destruction of potentially viable embryos. More than 700 patients joined a class action lawsuit accusing Monash of secretly using embryos they had asked to be discarded. The parents’ decision to have the embryos destroyed was on the basis of the flawed testing which returned false positives for abnormalities. Monash subsequently used those unwanted embryos for scientific experimentation.
Repromed, a related Monash IVF company, was also accused of falsifying the results of a clinical trial, forging patient signatures on consent forms, and destroying documents to hide evidence of the illegal embryo experiments. Monash didn’t admit liability, but settled the class action out of court for $56 million.
IVF industry smear campaign
The entire reproductive health industry should be chastened by the many examples of malpractice that are occurring with alarming regularity; yet rather than question its own morality, it has taken to discrediting alternatives to IVF. A natural approach to fertility, known as Restorative Reproductive Medicine, or RRP, is the latest casualty in the IVF industry’s campaign to establish itself as the only solution to the problem of infertility.
RRM is superior to IVF for a number of reasons, including its more wholistic approach to human life, its moral procedures and its higher success rate. Additionally, children conceived using RRP techniques are without the health risks so prevalent among children born using IVF.
The National Catholic Bioethics Center in America approves of RRP, describing its goal as the treatment of “the root causes of dysfunctions that make it difficult or impossible for couples to conceive and bring to birth children”. RRP is also recommended by the Washington-based think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, which states,
“RRM succeeds even after IVF has failed, at a fraction of the cost, especially across multiple pregnancies. One study published in 2024 found that 40% of couples previously diagnosed with infertility conceived naturally after undergoing RRM-based treatments compared with a 24% success rate with IVF. Another 2018 study found that 32.1% of women who had an average of two failed IVF cycles conceived naturally following targeted medical interventions with RRM.”
Yet its success has made RRM a target by the IVF behemoth, which regards it as “an approach long confined to the medical fringe”.
Conclusion
It must be restated that even if IVF could be provided without numerous opportunities for human error to derail its effectiveness, it would remain immoral. IVF kills more babies than abortion and can lead to harmful results such as huge numbers of donor-conceived children being related.
Society’s reliance on IVF is predicated on the idea that anyone — in any kind of relationship or none — is entitled to a child if he or she wants one. It is this philosophy that has given rise to abortion and surrogacy, as well as to IVF. As American author John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, has warned,
“The reproductive marketplace is built on twin illusions of consumerism and control. In this world, the almighty ‘I’ should have whatever he or she wants. Those who want sex without children should not be ‘punished’ with a kid. Those who want a child without the trouble of giving birth can rent an incubator for their little accessories. Those who’ve chosen an inherently sterile union can insist, not only that they should be able to have kids, but that others should pay for it. Any future technologies will be utilised accordingly.”
A return to the traditional view of marriage and family is the only solution to the heart-breaking problem of children being perceived as commodities. Until that happens, IVF will remain a defective product sold with no guarantee of satisfaction.
About the author
Kathy Clubb is an Australian mother and grandmother and has home-educated her children for the best part of 30 years. She has undertaken official pro-life work for 10 years, first in Tasmania, and then in Victoria. In 2016, Kathy was part of an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Victoria’s abortion exclusion-zones, which led to a constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia in late 2018. Her articles have appeared at LifeSiteNews, Online Opinion, Family Life International, The Remnant Newspaper, Caldron Pool and Fidelity magazine.