Time to end self-regulation of the Australian fertility industry

The Australian fertility industry has been rocked by several recent cases of embryo and sperm mix-ups. With a lack of transparency about what clinics do to prevent such errors recurring, trust and confidence in the industry and how it is regulated have been eroded.

The fertility industry has been self-regulating to date. But, as these cases show, a move to a system of independent accreditation of clinics against national standards is urgently needed.

Errors reported in the media

All three of the major fertility groups that own and operate clinics around the country have been involved in incidents in the past year.

At the Monash IVF group, it was revealed that an embryo belonging to another woman had mistakenly been transferred to a patient at a Brisbane-based clinic, with the patient giving birth to a child that was not genetically related to her or her partner (see BioNews 1285). At a Melbourne-based clinic, a woman's own embryo was transferred to her, instead of an embryo created with her female partner's egg as planned (see BioNews 1293). Monash IVF...