WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — An Australian woman gave birth to a stranger without her knowledge after receiving another patient’s embryo from an in vitro fertilization clinic due to “anthropogenic error,” the clinic said.
The mixup was discovered in February when a Brisbane city clinic found that the parents of the birth found that one embryo was too many in storage, Monash IVF said in a statement provided Friday. Staff found that an embryo from another patient had been accidentally thawed and transferred to the birth mother, a spokesman said.
Australian news outlets reported that the baby was born in 2024. Monash IVF did not check how old the child was.
This image from the video shows the exterior of the Monash IVF Clinic in Brisbane, Australia on Friday, April 11, 2025 (AUBC, Channel 9 via AP)
The company, one of Australia’s largest IVF providers, said initial investigations did not find any other such errors. The statement did not identify or provide details of any relevant patients regarding child custody.
“We’re all in Monash IVF in devastation, so we’re going to apologize to everyone involved,” CEO Michael Knaap said. “We will continue to support our patients throughout this extremely miserable time.”
“Human errors” were “despite strict laboratory safety protocols in place,” the statement said. The company said it reported the episode to relevant regulators in Queensland.
Monash IVF opened in 1971 and sees patients in dozens of locations across Australia. Last year, the company resolved class action lawsuits from more than 700 patients, and rejected liability after claiming that the clinical had destroyed a potentially viable embryo.
The clinic has paid a $56 million Australian dollar ($35 million) settlement.
Rare cases of embryonic disruption have been previously reported, including the US, UK, Israel and Europe. A woman from Georgia in February filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after giving birth to a stranger’s baby.
Krystena Murray noticed the postnatal error of the baby, as she and her sperm donor were white and her child was black. Murray voluntarily gave his biological parents five months after she wanted to raise a baby but was told she couldn’t win a legal battle for his custody.
In Australia, states have created their own laws and regulations governing the use of IVFs. Queensland Parliament passed the first law in 2024 regulating the sector.
The measure established registrations for all people devised in the clinic and made the destruction of the donor’s medical history illegal. The change followed an official report that it condemned the storage of frozen sperm donations in Queensland and found that nearly half of the checked samples were misidentified or recommended to destroy thousands.
Australia’s states and territories “we need to check if their regulations are scratching,” Social Services Minister Amanda Richworth told the news program today on Friday.
“We need to regain confidence and it’s essential that it happens.”
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