Hundreds of leftover IVF embryos from British couples have been given away to other people without their knowledge or explicit consent in a controversial Spanish “embryo adoption scheme”. As a result, hundreds of British couples may have unknown biological children in Europe or other parts of the world.

The Institut Marques clinic in Barcelona runs an “embryo adoption scheme” in which spare embryos are given to other women if the couple is unsure of what to do with them or if they do not reply to the clinic’s correspondence. Anonymity rules in Spain mean that the children will lose all links with their biological parents.

The situation has highlighted the risks of seeking fertility treatment abroad, where different laws apply. More and more British are going to foreign clinics where donor eggs or sperm are more readily available.

The “embryo adoption programme” at Barcelona’s Institut Marques clinic started in 2004, and the clinic says it is the first of its kind. A spokeswoman for the clinic that over one-third of British couples they treated are unsure of what to do with their embryos. This means that since 2004, 114 out of 317 couples treated did not decide what to do with their embryos, and they were adopted out. A further 26 couples agreed to adoption.

Each year the clinic writes to patients giving them the options to donate the embryos to other patients, donate them for research, keep them for future use or destroy them. However, the letters go mostly unanswered.

Prof Juan Alvarez, scientific director of Institut Marques and a professor at Harvard Medical School, had an explanation for this. “To sign this document creates a difficult situation for these couples and in some cases may trigger emotional conflicts. They value so much these embryos which, in fact, are brothers of their children already born, that they cannot make a final decision and that is why they leave it to the medical team of the centre to make that decision.”

Single women or couples can adopt the embryos. Each embryo is matched to a woman of the same race, and implanted in the womb and carried as normal. There is no official paperwork for adoption, because the “adoptive” mothers give birth to the children. ~ London Telegraph, Jul 22