Embryo Errors, Flooded Clinics: Kindbody and IVF’s Risky Business
Current and former employees of the venture-backed company describe understaffed clinics and inconsistent safety protocols that they say contributed to errors. Kindbody says its incident rate is in line with other leading US programs.
Illustration: Angelica Alzona
In March, a 39-year-old woman and her husband sat in a fertility clinic near Atlanta, and waited. The woman was there to have an embryo implanted in her uterus, the final stage of a grueling in vitro fertilization process involving hormone injections, multiple egg retrievals and more than $30,000 of the couple’s savings.
Three hours passed. Then a doctor emerged with jarring news: The embryo that the clinic had been storing — the couple’s last one — had been mislabeled. Staff couldn’t be sure it was hers. The woman broke down. All this effort, all this money, only to learn it might’ve all been for nothing, thought the woman, who asked not to be identified discussing the private ordeal.