Some people involved in a class action against two fertility services over the use of a non-invasive test which may have incorrectly classified embryos as abnormal have been told their embryos are still being stored.
Key points:
- Monash IVF and Repromed found out a non-invasive method to test embryos was inaccurate
- At the time, they told patients they could destroy them or donate them to science
- They now say some of those embryos may be viable
The lawyer representing about 200 affected parties in Victoria’s Supreme Court said the mistake had resulted in some women choosing to be implanted with another person’s embryo, while others have lost precious months of fertility.
The class action launched last December alleges Melbourne-based Monash IVF and Adelaide-based Repromed breached their duty of care by failing to tell patients about the pitfalls of a type of testing that does not require a biopsy.
There are two ways to conduct such testing: the first method is through a biopsy, which involves taking a tissue sample from an embryo, a method that is considered invasive.
The second method is called non-invasive pre-implantation genetic testing and involves collecting DNA from the culture that the embryo has been growing in while in the laboratory.
The inaccuracy of the test — used by the two services between May 2019 and October 2020 — was discovered last October.
Patients were informed of the issue after many had already made the choice to donate the embryos to science or destroy them.
Lawyer Michel Margalit said some clients had discovered last week that some of their embryos were still in storage.
Those that had been donated could still be retrieved, but the others were lost forever.
“They acted on the advice that their embryos were abnormal or had been destroyed,” Ms Margalit said.
She said they were not told about the pitfalls of the experimental testing regime.
“In this case, there was an alternative — a reliable test, a biopsy method — and women were steered away from that method, to this non-invasive method and they just didn’t know the mess they were walking into,” she said.
Decision up to patients
Monash IVF and Repromed have now stopped using non-invasive pre-implantation genetic testing.
Repromed medical director Professor Kelton Tremellen said the test turned out to be not as accurate as the company had hoped.
He said some of the embryos that could now be used might still be abnormal.
“What we’re trying to do is say, look, unfortunately, we’ve now recognised that the test is not as accurate as it was originally portrayed to us and that we want to give these individuals the opportunity to make a decision now what they want to do with those embryos,” he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
“Some people will say ‘I simply don’t want to use them, we’ve moved on’.
“Others will say, ‘look, we’ll accept the risk and transfer them and effectively consider them to be embryos that haven’t been tested at all’.”
He said he and other scientists had “lost sleep” worrying about the effect on patients.
“Rather than sweeping it under the carpet, we’re trying to be open and socially responsible by having full disclosure.”