Quote:
Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
* Serious question which I have never seen addressed? What happens to these things? Are they "killed"? Left to rot in the drain? What?
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The parents of the embryos have to pay a fee every month to keep the embryos frozen. They aren't stored for free. The institutions have various contractual provisions regarding what will be done with the embryos if the parents don't pay to keep them frozen. Typically the parents are given the option of transferring the embryos to another facility but if they don't respond and don't pay to keep them frozen, typically they are destroyed. This is all (or should all be) spelled out in the contract that the parents enter into with the assisted reproductive facility.
If the parents keep paying, they keep them frozen. Some parents put their unused embryos up for adoption. Others donate them to reserachers to conduct embryonic stem cell research with.
