Egg-Freezing: What's the Success Rate?
By Staff Reporter,
BBC News
| 02. 17. 2020
The fertility expert, Lord Robert Winston, appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the campaign to relax the current ten-year limit on freezing eggs.
Lord Winston, who is professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, warned that it was "a very unsuccessful technology" and said: "The number of eggs that actually result in a pregnancy after freezing is about 1%." He later clarified he was referring to live births.
But the body which regulates fertility treatment in the UK - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - puts the success rate at closer to one in five - a far better chance than the one in a hundred Lord Winston suggests.
So, why the different figures?
It's because the two are measuring the success rate based on different stages of fertility treatment.
An IVF cycle involving frozen eggs goes something like this:
- Eggs which were previously frozen and stored are thawed
- The ones that survive the thawing will be fertilised with sperm
- Eggs that are successfully fertilised start to develop into embryos
- Of the embryos that...
Related Articles
The Center for Genetics and Society is delighted to recommend the current edition of GMWatch Review – Number 589. UK-based GMWatch, a long-standing ally, was founded in 1998 by Jonathan Matthews as an independent organization seeking to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the GMO industry and its supporters. Matthews and Claire Robinson are its directors and managing editors.
CGS works to ensure that social justice, equity, human rights, and democratic governance are front...
By Ryan Cross, Endpoints News | 08.19.2025
Human eggs are incredibly rare cells. The ovary typically produces only 400 mature eggs across a woman’s life. But biologists in George Church’s lab at Harvard University — a group that’s never content with nature’s limits — just got a...
By Katherine Drabiak, Journal of Medical Ethics Forum | 08.07.2025
Adapted from Mitochondrial DNA at
National Human Genome Research Institute
Recently, media outlets around the world have been reporting on children born from pronuclear genome transfer (sometimes called “3-parent IVF,” “mitochondrial donation” or “mitochondrial replacement therapy”) at Newcastle Fertility Center...
By Nicky Hudson, The Conversation | 08.12.2025