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According to a study published last June, the number of human embryos cryopreserved following artificial reproduction has reached a record level in the UK. Published in The New Bioethics, the study analysed data provided by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) between 1991 and 2019. The figures show that at least 130,000 stored embryos have been destroyed in the UK since 1991. This situation, already problematic in itself, is particularly so in the UK, where legislation relating to human embryos based on the 1984 Warnock Report recognises that they have a ‘special moral status’.
Artificial procreation: technique raises questions about status of embryos
This study takes place against a backdrop of ever-increasing use of artificial procreation. The number of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycles recorded in approved fertility clinics in the UK has risen from around 6,700 cycles in 1991 to 76,000 in 2021. To avoid the risks and complications associated with hormonal stimulation and oocyte retrieval, each IVF cycle involves the freezing of supernumerary embryos. 500,000 embryos are currently cryopreserved in the UK. The study stresses that the difficulty couples have in deciding their fate, and their reluctance to donate them to another couple or to research, will probably lead to the destruction of a large number of these embryos.
Since 2022, the UK Health and Care Act has allowed embryos conceived during IVF to be stored for up to 55 years after their creation (provided that consent is renewed every 10 years). The risk, raised by the study, is that this could lead to an ever-increasing number of stored embryos and accentuate the moral problem posed by their fate.
The Warnock report on human embryos: limits of an ‘undefined moral status’
This report defines the human embryo in its early stages as a ‘potential human being’, the embryo being considered neither as an inanimate object nor as a person. This vagueness allows research to be carried out on the embryo up to the 14th day of its development. The report also states that the embryo ‘of the human species’ should benefit from some protection in law, without specifying the contours of this protection. Drawing on other sources, the HFEA study highlights the inextricable situation of couples who ‘may regard their embryos as their unborn children or even as existing children. Lacking a clear status, the embryo resulting from artificial procreation is likely to be used as laboratory material even though it was designed to fulfil a desire for a child.
The cryopreserved embryo: doomed to destruction?
According to another study, published in 2019 in Fertility & Sterility, only 8% of the families questioned intended to make further attempts at pregnancy with their cryopreserved embryos after one year. Faced with this reality, the authors of the 2024 study are concerned about the ever-increasing proportion of frozen embryos: in 2019, around 40,000 embryos were thawed for artificial reproduction, which represented only around 8% of the total stored. In the same year, more than twice as many new embryos were stored. The study rightly calls for attention to be paid to the ethical implications of this ‘industrial’ production of human embryos, most of which will end up frozen and destroyed. How can the creation of human embryos in these conditions be justified? As a reminder, in Belgium, of the 96,167 embryos created during IVF, 8.7% will be transferred, 18% will be frozen, and 52% destroyed (i.e. 50,380 embryos) according to figures for 2021.