The Province newspaper's cover story yesterday was about the closing of a fertility clinic at Women's Hospital. The clinic was called the "UBC Centre for Reproductive Health" and was the first clinic to achieve an IVF pregnancy in Canada. It closed earlier this year for many different reasons.

The Province newspaper's cover story yesterday was about the closing of a fertility clinic at Women's Hospital. The clinic was called the "UBC Centre for Reproductive Health" and was the first clinic to achieve an IVF pregnancy in Canada. It closed earlier this year for many different reasons.

Fertility clinics do many things, including freezing sperm, eggs, and embryos for future use. When a clinic closes, what happens to those tissues? Well, if you have something frozen and have been in touch with the clinic, you can ask them to destroy the tissue or transfer it to a clinic that is still open. This process is very straightforward as long as the clinic can still reach people and people can still reach the clinic. The problem comes when people are unreachable and their wishes for their frozen tissue are unknown.

When the clinic cannot reach people, what should they do? Until now, they have just kept the embryos stored but the UBC/Women's Hospital IVF Clinic can no longer afford that as it costs about $2000/day.

How could this have been avoided? In establishing our new clinic, we have better patient tracking and identification than ever before. We contact patients annually and insist they tell us if they move, get divorced, etc. so that we can keep our records up-to-date. It's challenging and expensive and I can still imagine scenarios where people are not reachable. Until the UBC clinic's closure this year, no other clinic in Canada has ever closed, so the issue about what to do for unreachable patients has not been resolved, though it seems the clinic's intention is to destroy the specimens.

If you have tissue frozen anywhere, my advice is to contact the clinic annually as well as whenever your address or phone number changes. The tissue you have frozen is yours and needs attention just like your bank statement, mother's birthday, pap smear, or wedding anniversary!

At Olive we have taken in many, many specimens from the closure of the UBC Centre and are happy to accept more specimens as long as their owners wish.

Fertility clinics do many things, including freezing sperm, eggs, and embryos for future use. When a clinic closes, what happens to those tissues?