Errors and accidents often go unreported in the burgeoning fertility industry, which is largely self-policed and not mandated to notify even patients of mistakes.
later found that a manufacturing defect was largely to blame for the disaster but also implicated the center. The lab director had unplugged a malfunctioning computer, muting 128 alarms that warned of trouble. Lab personnel did not
In vitro fertilization is the most common form of assisted reproduction. Doctors retrieve eggs from a patient’s ovaries and an embryologist combines them with sperm to create embryos in a lab. The embryos can be frozen for future use or transferred to the uterus days after they are created. at Pacific Fertility Center when it crumpled like an empty soda can, devastating nearly 500 people’s hopes of having children.
liquid nitrogen, which keeps eggs and embryos frozen, in tanks without computers have proved reliable for decades, he said, and a sudden crack in a weld in a storage tank, which caused the catastrophe, could not have been foreseen. In most clinics, reproductive material is preserved in liquid nitrogen in double-walled tanks at nearly minus-200 degrees Celsius. These tanks use a vacuum between the two walls to keep material cold, like a Thermos. Liquid nitrogen evaporates and must be added and monitored 365 days a year. Computers, alarms and auto-fill devices help, but ultimate responsibility falls on the people running the lab.
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