Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven AM. A mix up at an IVF
Speaker 1: clinic has led to a woman giving birth to a
Speaker 1: stranger's baby. It's the kind of horror story that is
Speaker 1: hard to imagine when you leaf through the pink branded
Speaker 1: marketing material of Australia's major fertility clinics. But this mistake,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest and most reputable clinics in the country,
Speaker 1: has had devastating consequences that reach far beyond the affected
Speaker 1: families and with implications for every person relying on fertility
Speaker 1: treatment in Australia. Today, writer and public health campaigner Hanna
Speaker 1: Bambra on how Monash IVF has handled its monumental mistake
Speaker 1: and why the IVF industry is so vulnerable to human error.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, June twenty five. So how You've been looking
Speaker 1: into some pretty catastrophic erarors that have been happening at
Speaker 1: IVF clinics in Australia and some of these stories I
Speaker 1: think are pretty terrifying and almost unbelievable. Tell me about
Speaker 1: what's been coming to light.
Speaker 2: So earlier this month.
Speaker 3: There was a couple at Monash IVF in Clayton who
Speaker 3: were told that they received the wrong embryo. That was
Speaker 3: a queer couple and she received her own embryo instead
Speaker 3: of her partner's embrero, which wasn't on their plan, and
Speaker 3: this has been referred to as an incredibly rare human error.
Speaker 3: But it comes only two months after an announcement that
Speaker 3: at monash Ivf's Brisbane clinic, someone gave birth to a
Speaker 3: stranger's child.
Speaker 1: Which I imagine would have been a pretty shocking thing
Speaker 1: to discover.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly shocking.
Speaker 1: There are urgent calls for tighter industry regulation tonight as
Speaker 1: new details emerge into what went wrong in the monash
Speaker 1: IVF bungle.
Speaker 4: The two women were patients at monash IVF. Woman A
Speaker 4: had a number of embryo successfully frozen. Months later, when
Speaker 4: there was one less than she was initially told, doctors
Speaker 4: said they must have counted wrong, but really one had
Speaker 4: been transferred into woman B, who became pregnant.
Speaker 3: Those people will be assumed to be the parents of
Speaker 3: that child, but they have no genetic links to that child,
Speaker 3: and that child is now nearly two years old, so
Speaker 3: it's taken a long time for that to come to light,
Speaker 3: and that would be a really confusing thing for the
Speaker 3: birth parents, for the child themselves, and for the couple
Speaker 3: whose or individual whose embryo was used. And I can't
Speaker 3: help but think, what if that was your last embryo
Speaker 3: that was given to a stranger.
Speaker 1: And so when these stories of embryo mix ups came
Speaker 1: to light, and what has the response been from Monash IVF.
Speaker 2: So Monash IVF have apologized and earlier this month, their
Speaker 2: CEO stepped down.
Speaker 5: In a statement to the AX. On Thursday morning, Monoch
Speaker 5: Chavif announced it's chief Michael Kannap, was out, two days
Speaker 5: after the company revealed it had incorrectly transferred the wrong
Speaker 5: embryo to a patient in Melbourne last week.
Speaker 3: They've launched internal investigations and their clinical director has said
Speaker 3: that whenever there's humans in a system, there's going to
Speaker 3: be the potential for human error, but it's incredibly rare
Speaker 3: for that to happen. And I think the fact that
Speaker 3: there's now been two announcements in two months is really
Speaker 3: scary for people.
Speaker 1: And having embryos mixed up in this way. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is on the higher end of things that can
Speaker 1: go wrong when you're talking about IVF, but people who
Speaker 1: have been to these providers have talked about other smaller
Speaker 1: but still very painful things that have happened to them
Speaker 1: as they've gone through that process. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: about some of the stories that you've heard.
Speaker 3: Sure, So, as you said, receiving the wrong embryo is
Speaker 3: probably the most catastrophic mistake that could happen in a clinic,
Speaker 3: but it seems like these instances have been a platform
Speaker 3: for people to start sharing other really scary things that
Speaker 3: have happened to them in clinics as well. So there's
Speaker 3: one woman who I spoke to who had been to
Speaker 3: another major clinic based in Melbourne and she went through
Speaker 3: a round of IVF.
Speaker 2: She was able to.
Speaker 3: Extract three eggs during that process, and she would have
Speaker 3: already been feeling really vulnerable at that point because you
Speaker 3: do get given statistics like one in four eggs is
Speaker 3: likely to survive thawing. But in this instance, all three
Speaker 3: eggs survived thawing, so it it looks like it was
Speaker 3: going well, and then they just had to wait and
Speaker 3: see how many of those eggs turned into embryos. Because
Speaker 3: she was going through the process with her partner, one
Speaker 3: day she received a call to say that two of
Speaker 3: those eggs had turned into embryos, and then the next
Speaker 3: day she received another call saying, actually, sorry, we were wrong.
Speaker 3: None of them have survived. And then they received another
Speaker 3: call later that day saying, actually that was an ADMIN error.
Speaker 2: Two of them did survive.
Speaker 3: So, as you can imagine, there's a huge amount of
Speaker 3: grief that can come up in those kind of mistakes,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people say that they feel like
Speaker 3: they've failed as well, and then for that to just
Speaker 3: have been an ADMIN era really isn't good enough. You know,
Speaker 3: they're not treated with the bedside manner that they should
Speaker 3: receive when they're going through such a delicate and personal process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's obviously a huge impact of something like
Speaker 1: this on the people who are actually going through it,
Speaker 1: people like Stacy. But what message do you think it
Speaker 1: sends to others who might be considering IVF and are
Speaker 1: now seeing these mistakes play out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So people considering going through IVF now or about
Speaker 3: to go through the process obviously are seeing a real
Speaker 3: lack of public trust in IVF, and it's often something
Speaker 3: that they might have been saving for.
Speaker 2: For a really long time. So I think people are
Speaker 2: really vulnerable by.
Speaker 3: The time they get to this stage of considering IVF.
Speaker 3: Some people consider it to be their last hope, and
Speaker 3: other people have thought about it for a really long time.
Speaker 3: So I think seeing these kind of mistakes happen is
Speaker 3: putting extra stress on people who are already already vulnerable
Speaker 3: and already trying to trust.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, how Hannah's own IVF journey
Speaker 1: showed her what's wrong with the industry. Hannah, this is
Speaker 1: a personal story for you as well. Could you talk
Speaker 1: to me about your IVF journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So two years ago I found myself single and in
Speaker 3: my thirties, and I received a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome,
Speaker 3: and I decided to freeze my eggs. And for me,
Speaker 3: that was a really empowering decision, taking a bit of
Speaker 3: control of my fertility. And Monash IVF have been in
Speaker 3: the game for a really long time. They actually were
Speaker 3: part of Monash University and achieved the world's first IVF
Speaker 3: pregnancy in the last century, so their reputation really appealed
Speaker 3: to me. I thought, if I'm going with the people
Speaker 3: who essentially invented IVA for part of those early days,
Speaker 3: then I'm going to be in good hands. But when
Speaker 3: I actually started to engage with the clinic, I was
Speaker 3: really surprised by how old fashioned their approach was. I
Speaker 3: got a lot of questions about being single, which I
Speaker 3: was surprised about because I thought a lot of people
Speaker 3: would be going through this process, especially the initial egg
Speaker 3: freezing process by themselves or with a friend. And you know,
Speaker 3: there's quite stigmatizing language that can be used for people.
Speaker 3: If you are single or queer, you are still considered
Speaker 3: socially infertile in Australia. It's kind of riddled with assumptions
Speaker 3: about why you might be going through this process and
Speaker 3: almost treating it like a lifestyle choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like there are still very much inequities
Speaker 1: baked into the system.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: So every form that I was given as a single
Speaker 3: person had a place for a partner to sign, which
Speaker 3: I think is really insensitive at the least, And it
Speaker 3: also really assumes that everyone going through IVF or using
Speaker 3: ART is.
Speaker 2: A heterosexual couple, which just isn't true.
Speaker 3: Nearly six percent of children in Australia are born to
Speaker 3: IVF now, so there's a huge range of people who
Speaker 3: need to use assisted reproductive technologies. Only recently was there
Speaker 3: some changes to the Medicare rebates. So previously you had
Speaker 3: to prove that you were medically infertile rather than socially
Speaker 3: infertile to be able to get any kind of Medicare rebates,
Speaker 3: and just as of late last year, they've changed that
Speaker 3: so you can get small rebates if you're a single
Speaker 3: person or if you're in a same sex female couple,
Speaker 3: which is quite outdated language as well. And to be honest,
Speaker 3: the medica rebates don't really touch the edges of how
Speaker 3: much these processes cost.
Speaker 1: And just to come back to the way that these
Speaker 1: companies operate, it seems like some of these mistakes are
Speaker 1: really only coming to light by chance, and sometimes a
Speaker 1: long time after they've actually happened. So do you think
Speaker 1: that there is an issue here in terms of oversight
Speaker 1: and transparency.
Speaker 3: I think that's what's coming through in these stories. And
Speaker 3: I spoke to an embryologist, Lucy Lyons, who said that
Speaker 3: people in labs are really overworked and really tired, and
Speaker 3: the increasing corporatization of the IVF sector, which now brings
Speaker 3: in more than eight hundred and ten million dollars a year,
Speaker 3: means that people aren't taking breaks. People aren't in labs
Speaker 3: that are adequately staffed. So even though the people on
Speaker 3: the front lines might really care about what they're doing,
Speaker 3: there isn't that oversight or transparency baked into the process.
Speaker 3: As you said, a lot of these clinics are looking
Speaker 3: at how they can improve their bottom line, how they
Speaker 3: can get new people into the system, how they can
Speaker 3: continue to return profits to shareholders. But I don't think
Speaker 3: there's enough focus on people who are coming through and
Speaker 3: how personal this process is. There's nothing more personal in
Speaker 3: a way than trying to start a family.
Speaker 1: Are there particular things that you, as someone who's gone
Speaker 1: through this process, would say that need to be changed
Speaker 1: that would have made it better for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I spoke to another woman as well who said
Speaker 3: that she was left with a lot of unchecked grief
Speaker 3: and that a lot of people who go through this
Speaker 3: process don't have their expectations managed adequately. And I think
Speaker 3: a lot of it comes down to the way that
Speaker 3: things are communicated. So even ensuring that everyone who speaks
Speaker 3: to consumers has a background in trauma informed care would
Speaker 3: be art. Making counseling mandatory for people and helping them
Speaker 3: book those sessions would be really helpful.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: So sometimes you might go from a phlebotomis taking your blood,
Speaker 3: to a nurse who is going to tell you about
Speaker 3: the next step in your cycle, to an ultrasound technician
Speaker 3: who is about to deliver an ultrasound for you, and
Speaker 3: you need to repeat facts to everyone again and again,
Speaker 3: and they might all give you different information, which can
Speaker 3: be quite confusing. Consent isn't talked about enough either, And
Speaker 3: even in my experience when I went to get an
Speaker 3: internal ultrasound, there was an example where someone said, Oh,
Speaker 3: this student's going to do your internal ultrasound today.
Speaker 2: Isn't that great.
Speaker 3: It's the first time they've ever done an internal ultrasound,
Speaker 3: And there wasn't much thought around whether I actually consented
Speaker 3: to that process. An internal just sound is very personal
Speaker 3: and very invasive, and if someone is inserting something inside you,
Speaker 3: there needs to be a conversation about that. And I
Speaker 3: think that's really common across the board that there isn't
Speaker 3: training around how to ensure that someone feels safe and
Speaker 3: someone feels in control of their own body and their
Speaker 3: own fertility, because that is essentially why they are seeking
Speaker 3: out IVF in the first place.
Speaker 1: Well, Hannah, thank you for your time and for your reporting.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, US President Donald Trump says
Speaker 1: a full cease fire is now in effect between Iran
Speaker 1: and Israel, although there are still questions as to whether
Speaker 1: both parties have officially confirmed the agree. Making the announcement
Speaker 1: on social media, President Trump said a phased twenty four
Speaker 1: hour process would begin on Tuesday, with a run unilaterally
Speaker 1: halting all operations, and Israel following suit twelve hours later
Speaker 1: and after nine weeks. The triple murder trial of accused
Speaker 1: killer Aaron Patterson is expected to wrap up in the
Speaker 1: coming days. The jury is considering whether Miss Patterson knew
Speaker 1: she was feeding family members poisonous death cap mushrooms that
Speaker 1: left three dead and one critically ill. Miss Patterson denies
Speaker 1: knowing the mushrooms were poisonous and claims it was a
Speaker 1: terrible accident.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven am.
Speaker 2: See you tomorrow.