HOUSTON - We're hearing from a Houston fertility clinic that's facing a lawsuit over the use of damaged embryos during in-vitro fertilization treatment.
The suit was filed on Tuesday by five couples who say AspireHFI knew about a lab issue that damaged their embryos--and continued to implant those embryos into the would-be mothers.
In a statement, AspireHFI said,
"AspireHFI is dedicated to the well-being of our patients and their tissue. We were made aware this afternoon of the allegations related to embryo transfers. To be clear, at no time did Aspire ever knowingly transfer non-viable tissue. These allegations are false and defamatory.
In March of this year, AspireHFI identified a slight decrease in thawing survival rates for embryos frozen in our Houston Piney Point laboratory between February 1stand March 14, 2024. The decrease in survival rates that appeared to coincide in time with a change in the vitrification media used to facilitate the rapid freezing of tissue without damaging the tissue.
Immediately upon identifying this potential issue, we halted use of this media. Upon returning to our previously used media, our survival rates returned to our industry leading standards. No other Aspire-affiliated laboratory was impacted by this issue.
To AspireHFI’s knowledge at the time the issue was limited to a decrease in embryo survival rates at the time of embryo thawing. Indeed, there are numerous healthy ongoing pregnancies from embryos successfully thawed that had been frozen during the dates in question and there was no reason to believe that any embryos that survived thawing would be negatively impacted.
Patients known to have been adversely impacted have been individually notified since the issue first became apparent.
AspireHFI subsequently became aware of a moderate decrease in overall expected pregnancy rates for the period in question - which may or may not be related to vitrification media - and has been working to notify other potentially affected patients and offer replacement services.
As always, our mission is to work together with our patients to achieve their family-building dreams."