If life begins at conception, then a 24½-year-old baby was born last month in east Tennessee — the longest-frozen embryo ever to be successfully delivered.
Newborn Emma Wren Gibson was conceived more than two decades ago as one of several viable embryos for a couple undergoing in vitro fertilization.
The fertilized egg from which Emma grew was cryopreserved on Oct. 14, 1992, and thawed by scientists from the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), a faith-based group that facilitates “embryo adoptions.”
The previous record-holder was a boy born in England from a 20-year-old frozen embryo in 2010.
Researchers at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library concluded that Emma holds the all-time record for longest-frozen embryo to come to birth, the NEDC said.
Emma’s embryo was transferred March 15 into the uterus of Tina Gibson, 26, who was born the same year Emma was conceived. Mrs. Gibson is about 1½ years older than her daughter, from the date of conception.
Mrs. Gibson and her husband, Benjamin, weren’t aware of their daughter’s world record until after doctors confirmed that Mrs. Gibson was pregnant.
“I will always remember what the Gibsons said when presented with the picture of their embryos at the time of transfer,” NEDC lab director Carol Sommerfelt, who thawed Emma’s embryo, said in statement. “’These embryos could have been my best friends,’ as Tina herself was only 25 at the time of transfer.”
Emma was born Nov. 25, weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces and measuring 20 inches long, according to a statement.
Dr. Sommerfelt told The Washington Times that latest milestone speaks to the efficacy of the early technology.
“To have embryos survive that were frozen in 1992 as well as these embryos did is pretty phenomenal,” she said.
Under U.S. law, embryos are considered property and couples who have a surplus of embryos after in vitro fertilization have a number of options. They include donating the embryos to research or to an embryo-adoption agency like the NEDC, destroying them or storing them for future use.
Storage costs can range between $400 and $1,000 annually, Dr. Sommerfelt said. Couples who donate to the NEDC don’t have to pay for storage and adopting couples only pay for the procedure. An NEDC spokesman told CNN that this can cost about $12,500.
About half of couples that donate to the NEDC go through a process of “open communication,” Dr. Sommerfelt said, in that the donating and receiving couples communicate with each other and the children have the opportunity to meet their full siblings in the future.
In this case, however, the couple had donated their embryos anonymously to a storage center that has since closed down. The embryos came into the possession of the NEDC in 2012.
The Gibsons knew before they married that they might not be able to have children themselves.
“My husband has cystic fibrosis, so infertility is common,” Mrs. Gibson told CNN.
They fostered children and considered adoption before Mrs. Gibson’s father said he had seen a story about “embryo adoption” on the news.
It took a few weeks of discussion and research before the Gibsons decided to contact the Knoxville-based NEDC to adopt an embryo.
The Gibsons were ready for implantation after submitting an application and passing a medical screening and a home inspection by a social worker.
They told CNN they were given about 300 profiles of embryos to sift through. They first narrowed their selection to donors who were similar to themselves in height and weight before diving deeper into their medical histories.
The embryo that would develop into baby Emma was frozen on Day 1 of conception as a single-cell organism, as were two other sibling embryos.
Any thawing is expected to yield between 75 percent and 90 percent success, Dr. Sommerfelt said, but the three embryos all survived and divided normally into eight-cell embryos, which made them viable for implantation.
While all three were transferred into Mrs. Gibsons uterus, only one implanted — which is a typical result, Dr. Sommerfelt said, with a success rate about 25 percent to 30 percent.
“So everything was normal it was just that the time frame of the embryos had been … that’s what’s phenomenal about this whole story is that the embryos indeed, seemed to be suspended in time, frozen in time so to speak,” she said.
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