Warning about using UK donors!

[Applewisp]

A recent post discussed a woman being distraught because she had created embryos with her eggs and a sperm donor at UK clinic. After first child was born, she returned to create a sibling and was told donor had withdrawn consent! All embryos will be destroyed and her child will never have a full genetic sibling!

After a bad experience with a UK fertility clinic, my husband and I went to Prague where I got pregnant on first transfer with donor eggs. This got me curious if the same could happen with our embryos.

Unfortunately I have trouble copy/pasting on my device but I used Perplexity AI to research it. You can use any AI chat bot to get the info.

If you make embryos in UK, they are NOT fully yours! Donor can demand they be destroyed at any time and scupper your plans for genetic siblings! Embryos created by donor gametes in Prague ARE YOURS and cannot be affected by donor withdrawing consent because the consent covered that whole batch.

The Czech clinic was more honest with us whereas the UK clinic withheld information and gave false hope to loop us into a 10k IVF procedure which we did not understand had virtually no chance of succeeding. But this donor consent thing is even worse!

Based on this information, I would advise ALL British couples looking to conceive, especially with donors, to go abroad. And if you can’t use Czechia (hetero married couples only) use AI to find out if donors can withdraw consent and destroy your embryos in the country you’re looking to go to!

I should add that it’s not only the destruction of genetic siblings, but the COST of egg retrieval and embryo creation would need to happen all over again because you will be left with zero embryos! This is something people need to know before they pay massive money to UK fertility clinics!

The cost is much cheaper abroad so that makes up for airfare and hotel. Meds are cheaper. And you can do scans and bloods in UK do you only need to travel once or twice.

As someone pregnant by donor conception with embryos frozen so we can have genetic siblings, I just really think this is crucially important information that people need to know.

This is awful and should be something clinics warn about surely if you use donor eggs?

Speaking as a parent of a donor conceived child, I think it is only ethical that donors should be able to withdraw consent.

It is their genetic material and if they change their mind about having more offspring out in the world then they should be able to say no.

I'm saying this as someone who has been through many, many rounds of IUI and IVF, so I know how bloody hard it is from personal experience. I did not have an easy journey and was incredibly lucky to get my baby. But donors have to have rights too.

The recipient should get a full refund though does that happen if a donor withdraws consent last minute ?

I only know about donor sperm as that was my route. In my experience, if the donor withdraws consent then you get refunded for any vials you have bought and still have in storage.

Regardless though, that is more of a question about individual clinic policies - refunds should be addressed by clinics/ sperm banks.

It's still right that the donor can change their mind at any time. I doubt many people would donate if they didn't have that option.

I'm currently in early stages with the London Egg Bank and they have a free webinar next week so I may put forward a question about this.

I assumed that if I bought eggs they would be mine and did not realise that the donor could later withdraw consent, after embryos have been created with DH's sperm. That would be a fairly devastating scenario and a refund of clinic costs would nowhere near compensate for it.

I've actually had treatment abroad before and think the OP is oversimplifying with 'abroad=cheaper' as we spent tens of thousands of pounds, but treatment was very thorough and obviously prices and service levels vary by country. The reason I'm now considering UK treatment is more to do with logistics than finance. I will however seek further information on what happens in this scenario and how frequently it occurs.