I used to reassure worried intended parents that gamete mix-ups and losses were exceedingly rare and not something to be stressed over [there are so many more common disruptions with assisted reproduction cases to be more legitimately on guard about]. But we have seen, much to my and many other people’s dismay and shock, more than just one isolated instance recently of an IVF lab making a critical mistake in labeling and/or transfer of eggs/sperm/embryos, along with several large-scale cases of embryos being destroyed due to technological failure. These devastating situations are deserving of further scrutiny and evaluation of safeguards and protocols to determine what measures need to be implemented in order to eradicate them from happening.
Interesting to note that racial disparity is often the cause for suspicion with intended parents in a sperm, egg or embryo mix-up case. I am concerned about Caucasian gametes which may be inadvertently substituted for other Caucasian gametes, with less of a visual indicator as a result. Lab policies and redundancies are strict and careful across the board – these catastrophic results should just not be happening with this level of frequency.