Donated Generation

Embryo adoption becoming the rage
By Natalie Lester | Sunday, April 19, 2009

Even though warm spring weather is here, the snowflakes on the
necklace Cara Vest wears will not melt.
"Especially in the summer, people come up to me all the time and say,
'Why are you wearing snowflakes?'" Mrs. Vest said.
She happily explains the silver snowflakes represent her two children,
who were adopted as frozen embryos from another couple who had
"extras" after having children via in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Embryo adoption recently celebrated its 11th birthday. The Vests' 6-
year-old son, Jonah, was the 13th "snowflake baby" to be born.
In just three years — 2004 to 2006 — 988 babies have been born by this
process, says one medical researcher, citing federal data. The total
number born since Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program was
founded in November 1997 might conservatively be closer to 3,000, says
Ron Stoddart, executive director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions,
the agency that pioneered the process.
With an estimated 500,000 cyropreserved embryos in storage, there soon
could be a blizzard of babies born through embryo adoption.
Whether it takes off will depend on public awareness and acceptance,
especially among couples who have "extra" embryos, observers say. The
issue of embryonic stem-cell research is also a factor, as most people
currently think "excess" embryos are best donated to laboratories.
In addition, questions remain over whether the transfer of frozen
embryos should be termed an "adoption" or a "donation."
And while some adoption agencies, such as Bethany Christian Services,
embrace embryo adoption, others, including Catholic Charities, do not.
Despite the obstacles, embryo adoption is emerging just as domestic
infant adoption is vanishing and international adoption is becoming
more difficult. Embryo adoption may not be the right choice for
everyone, but it has been a dream come true for hundreds of families.

'I wanted to carry'
As infertility patients in the 1990s, Mrs. Vest and her husband,
Gregg, found themselves frustrated and childless after three IVF
treatments. They reluctantly began exploring traditional adoption, but
still were not satisfied.
"I wanted to carry [a child]," Mrs. Vest said. "I wanted to be
pregnant. I couldn't understand why something like [embryo adoption]
didn't exist."
She heard about embryo adoption when Hannah Strege, the world's first
snowflake baby, was featured on James Dobson's Focus on the Family
radio show. Mrs. Vest ran to the phone
"I dove right in and asked them to send me anything they had," she
said.
The Vests received an application to adopt an embryo, but Mrs. Vest
ended up putting it aside.
"It just wasn't time and, for some reason, I knew that," she said. "I
just kept saying, 'It's just not time.' Then, we moved into our house
and one day I knew I had to get it in the mail. So we dropped it in."
It wasn't long before the Loudoun County couple were notified they
were the perfect match for a donor family in Atlanta. The connection
was made, and the families met in Atlanta.
"We hit it off immediately," Mrs. Vest said. "It was quite an
experience, to be standing there, staring at these four kids who would
look like my kids one day."
The Atlanta couple donated their 23 excess embryos to the Vests. The
first embryos transferred to Mrs. Vest's uterus produced a pregnancy,
but the baby's heart stopped beating after nine weeks. The devastation
was so great that Mrs. Vest's family and friends urged her to stop the
process.
She decided to continue.
"I just knew — with every ounce of my being — I knew that I was
supposed to be doing this process, and whether or not I ended up with
a child in my arms at the end, was not why I was doing it," Mrs. Vest
said. "I just felt it was something God had given me and I was doing
it."
Jonah, the Vests' first child, was born in 2002 after three more
embryos were transferred.
"When they handed him to me, I just said 'I am so thankful you are
here,'" Mrs. Vest said.
A few years later, the Vests tried again. This time, 11 embryos did
not survive the thawing process, but three were transferred. Gabrielle
was born in 2005.
Jonah and Gabrielle are a joy, but there are three embryos left —
which leaves the Vests with a tough decision.
"All my friends keep saying, 'Give them up, you are happy with your
family,'" Mrs. Vest said. "But I don't know if I'm done. My kids would
love another sibling.
"The Lord obviously gave me kids at a later age, and I still don't
know the reason."

A donor story
In 2005, Michelle and Chris Casteel's struggle with infertility
finally ended. Thanks to their first IVF treatment, they had two
beautiful children — and two extra embryos.
The Yakima, Wash., couple already had decided to donate any remaining
embryos to another couple — giving them to a laboratory for research
was not a consideration, Mrs. Casteel said.
"In two weeks, you could see the hearts in these babies. So I knew
right away, they are not going for research," she said.
The couple was forced into action on their decision when they got a
$600 bill for another year's cryopreservation. The Casteels contacted
the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tenn. The
NEDC carefully explained their options.
"People can choose to take part in the selection of the adoptive
parents of their embryo, or choose not to know anything," said
Michelle Dicken, public relations manager at NEDC.
Donating couples can choose to have an open relationship, where they
can be a part of the embryo's life, or have an anonymous one, where
they will never meet.
"Some donors are very open — where they vacation with their kids — but
others are not and prefer not to have any contact with them," Ms.
Dicken said.
The NEDC sent the Casteels the profile of Joel and Holly Davis, a
Nebraska couple who had twin boys but wanted to have another child.
The couples clicked, and soon the NEDC was paying to ship the
Casteels' embryos to Tennessee, where the Davises would have the
embryos transferred into Mrs. Davis' uterus. One of the embryos
resulted in a successful pregnancy and the Davises joyfully welcomed
their daughter, Karissa, in 2007.
Today, the two families have "a wonderful friendship," Mrs. Casteel
said. The children have met each other, and while the Casteel children
may not yet fully understand how they came to have another biological
sister, "we will again tell them when they are much older," she said.

Unfamiliar term
The path to embryo adoption began in England, with the 1978 creation
of "test-tube" babies using IVF. A woman's eggs were successfully
fertilized with sperm in a petri dish and the resulting embryos were
transferred into the woman's uterus. The cryopreservation of embryos
began in 1984.
In the beginning, doctors focused on perfecting the IVF procedure and
didn't worry too much about the rising number of embryos in storage.
When faced with couples who didn't have any luck doing IVF with their
own eggs and sperm, doctors began cautiously experimenting with IVF
treatments with unrelated embryos.
In December 1998, Marlene and John Strege became the first couple in
the world to have a baby using an adopted frozen embryo.
Their historic journey started in late 1997 when they asked Mr.
Stoddart of Nightlight Christian Adoptions if they could adopt an
embryo. While Mr. Stoddart explored the novel idea, the Streges took
their moral questions to their pastors and Mr. Dobson, the Focus on
the Family founder.
"Ultimately, everyone with whom we made contact confirmed what we
already knew: that embryos are human lives and they need to be adopted
in the event that families responsible for their creation are unable
to use them," Mrs. Strege wrote in 2008 in Clearly Caring magazine.
The Streges and Mr. Stoddart came up with the "snowflake" concept
after attending a Christmas play in which an actress said, "In the
intricate design of each flake of snow, we find the Creator reflecting
the individual human heart," Mrs. Strege wrote in the magazine
article. These embryos are like snowflakes, they decided — "frozen,
unique, never again to be re-created."
Hannah, the Strege's daughter, paid a visit to Congress at the age of
2. She also attended a 2006 White House event when President Bush
announced the first veto of his presidency — there would be no further
federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
The federal government began funding embryo adoption awareness in
fiscal 2002, and more than $10 million has been spent so far.
Mr. Stoddart says his organization can document 1,200 babies who have
been born via embryo adoption, but he estimates that the true number
of births is closer to 3,000, thanks to myriad fertility clinics that
have done embryo transfers on their own.
According to federal data, there were 2,224 donated-embryo transfer
cycles between 2004 and 2006, resulting in 988 live births, said Dr.
Reginald Finger, who conducts research for the NEDC and published his
findings in an abstract in Fertility and Sterility.
Even so, Americans remain unfamiliar with the process, the NEDC found.
About 49 percent of 966 adults surveyed in 2007 by Harris Interactive
said they had ever heard of the term "embryo donation."
Once Americans understand it, though, they seem to approve of it:
Seventy percent agreed with the statement, "Embryo donation is a good
way to use frozen embryos."

Stem-cell research
With embryo adoption a relatively new concept and embryonic stem-cell
research so well publicized, it's not surprising that many people
choose research as the destination for any excess embryos.
A Duke University Medical Center survey of 1,020 fertility patients,
published in 2008, found that of people who were sure they had extra
embryos, 41 percent said it was very likely they would donate them to
science, while 16 percent favored embryo donation and 12 percent said
they would let their embryos be discarded.
Infertility experts said there is a scrupulous effort not to make
people's decisions for them.
"We don't tell people what to do," says Barbara Collura, executive
director of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, which has
received around $700,000 in federal embryo-adoption awareness funds.
"We don't persuade them. Some people come away saying, 'I feel more
informed and I can do this,' and others come away saying, 'I feel more
informed and I do not think I can go forward.' We are never up there
saying, 'You should do this, this is great' and we're never up there
saying, 'This is terrible.' We are just presenting the information as
best as we can," Ms. Collura said.
In fact, Mrs. Vest said, the issue of stem-cell research comes up all
the time when she explains embryo adoption.
"I understand the hope that [embryonic stem-cell research] gives
people," she said. "I don't want to take that hope from people, but I
think there are better options. … I can't see taking the lives of
these potential children for just a hope — and not a reality — at the
moment."

Adopt or donate
Another debate is whether the process of transferring embryos between
couples is an adoption or a donation. Generally, embryos are not
classified as people. Therefore, when couples transfer their embryos,
the process is a legal transfer of property, not an adoption. Some
specialists cater their vocabulary to the family they are talking to.
"I use the terms [adoption and donation] interchangeably in most
contexts," Mr. Stoddart said. "The donor family typically prefers to
use 'embryo donation,' whereas the receiving family prefers
'adoption.'"
However, others are specific about the words and argue that using
"adoption" adds legal work to the process.
"I think people that use the term 'embryo adoption' are doing a
disservice to those families," said Sean Tipton, public affairs
director for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
"This is not an adoption process; an adoption is a legal procedure
that transfers one child traditionally from one family to the other,"
Mr. Tipton said. "All they do by using this term is create more
hurdles for those that are considering this choice. It is clear that
those that are using the term are doing so for political purposes and
not for the benefit of the child."

(*Some states are actually passinglaws which would circumvent the adoption process and allow the receiving couple to put their names on the child's original birth certificate as if they were the genetic parents of the child. This blatantly strips the child of his/her civil right to KNOW his genetic/biological/genealogical
heritage. It is just a continuation of falsifying identity and birth
records for thousands of Americans. Genealogists predict that within four
more generations NO American's genealogy will be accurate, because of
sealed records, amended birth certificates, and practices such as this.)
Fuzzy future
"We haven't even touched the potential" of embryo adoption, said Maria
Lancaster, who has a 5-year-old "snowflake" daughter and became so
inspired about the process that last year she founded Embryo Adoption
Services of Cedar Park in Bothell, Wash.
There isn't a shortage of infertile couples, and with nearly 500,000
embryos in cyropreservation, "all they need is a womb," she said.
Embryo adoption is also affordable, proponents said.
The average expense of embryo adoptions — including home studies,
embryo shipping and transfer to the prospective mother — is between
$7,000 and $10,000, said Mr. Stoddart. This is relatively low compared
to the $12,000-a-session cost for IVF treatments, and traditional
adoption, which can run between $10,000 and $20,000 domestically, and
between $30,000 and $40,000 for international adoptions. "Adopting
through the foster care system is the only less-expensive option,"said Mr. Stoddart.
However, many specialists believe that embryo adoption, though it does
create another choice for families, will never truly replace
traditional adoption.
"As far as the future, we don't believe it will replace traditional
domestic adoption," said the NEDC's Ms. Dicken. "There are all pros
and cons to embryo adoption and all sorts of people for all different
reasons choose to do something else."
The ASRM supports embryo adoption as a personal choice for couples,
but doesn't see it as a primary goal for most couples.
"We think embryo donation for family-building is a terrific option for
some donors and adopters," Mr. Tipton said. But it has been offered
for a long time, and "it does not look like it is going to become a
real choice for families."
"It is all a matter of what people want," he said. "If they want to
adopt, they go adopt a child, and if they want to have a genetic
child, they go to infertility clinics."
Even Mr. Stoddart sees embryo adoption phasing out as IVF regulations
limit the number of embryos produced and IVF treatments become more
successful.
"Although the number of embryos in frozen storage is likely to
continue to grow for a while," he said, "I believe it will grow at a
slower rate as the techniques for creating embryos improve. … I would
like to see freezing of embryos become the exception rather than the
rule."
People who have participated in the process, however, see this as the
best option for these embryos.
Mrs. Vest knows that their story affected an old school friend who
went through IVF and ended up with extra embryos.
"She said to me, 'Because of you, my husband and I decided to put them
up for adoption,'" Mrs. Vest said as her eyes filled with tears. "I
just lost it. You get out there and you try to promote this, and you
so hope that somebody is listening, and that somebody will see how it
has touched our lives, and we are a normal happy family and we love
our kids.
"To actually have it affect somebody, and see that they would put
their embryos up for adoption and it would be OK. … This was
unbelievable."

• Cheryl Wetzstein contributed to this report.