Published: 14 October 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
An Israeli hospital has been involved in two cases of implanting embryos into the wrong woman. ELANA SZTOKMAN reports on the messy legal and ethical fallout.
An Israeli woman in advanced stages of pregnancy via in vitro fertilisation (IVF) has discovered by accident that the fetus she is carrying is not biologically her own. No, this is not an episode of Jane the Virgin. This actually happened. And IVF mix-ups are not as rare as one might have hoped.
The woman and her husband had gone through IVF earlier this year at Assuta Hospital in Rishon Letzion, outside of Tel Aviv, using what they believed was their own fertilised embryos. After undergoing genetic testing in her third trimester, she learned that the genes of the fetus do not belong to them.
Assuta immediately opened up an investigation and tracked down approximately 40 women who were going through the process of egg retrieval, fertilisation, freezing and thawing on the same day as the woman in question. Hospital authorities later announced that they believe they found the woman whose embryos were implanted, and that she is not currently pregnant.
They still have not located the embryo of the pregnant woman. They hospital also later announced it believed that the mistake happened at the stage of freezing the embryos.
The Health Ministry immediately established a committee to conduct an investigation and Assuta has since halted all IVF procedures. The committee hit its first snag when the Israeli media discovered that a member of the committee was a doctor who is also on the IVF team at Assuta. After a public outcry, the doctor resigned and the committee resumed its activities.
An investigative report by Israel TV Channel 12 found that it is not the first time something like this happened at Assuta.
The story gets worse. An investigative report by Israel TV Channel 12 found that it was not the first time something like this had happened at Assuta. One woman had sued the hospital when she discovered that her embryo was lost and, she suspected, implanted in another woman. The hospital came to an undisclosed financial settlement with the woman, and her suspicions were neither publicly confirmed nor denied. Employees also told reporters they have witnessed negligence in handling embryos.
