A survey published Thursday in the journal Fertility and Sterility has revealed that many fertility patients whose treatment had worked and had children were not able to decide what to do with the leftover frozen embryos.

Conducted on 1,020 fertility patients at nine clinics, the survey also showed that parents were not in the least pleased with the options the clinics offered them concerning the embryos.

Of the people interviewed, 53 percent stated they did not want to donate their remaining frozen embryos to other fertility patients, since they could not think of other persons raising their children and feared that their own might come someday to meet their unknown siblings.

In addition, 43 percent of the participants in the survey said they refused to let the clinics discard of their embryos, while approximately 66 percent were willing to donate the latter for research, an option only four of the nine clinics offered.

Twenty percent of the fertility patients stated they were considering keeping the embryos frozen forever at the clinics.
Some of the people who participated in the study put forward solutions that the clinics could not provide for, such as placing the embryos in a woman’s womb during a period she was unlikely to get pregnant, so they would not survive or having a ceremony to thaw the frozen embryos.

Currently, about 400,000 embryos are frozen at clinics throughout the nation, with the number increasing every day. If frozen under proper conditions, embryos remain viable for a period of ten years.