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Group promotes embryo 'adoption' Friday, August 3, 2007 3:30 AM By Misti Crane THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH A federally-funded Christian group that encourages "adopting" unused frozen embryos is in town today to tout its program. After women undergo in-vitro fertilization, there often are unused frozen embryos left at the end of the process. They and their significant others have several choices. They can keep them frozen, at a cost; let them be thawed and destroyed; donate them to science; or donate them for implantation in another woman looking to conceive. The last option has gained momentum in recent years, in large part because of federal grants that emerged after hearings on stem-cell research earlier this decade. Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which operates the Snowflakes embryo-adoption program and gets some of that grant money, will host an informational session from 6:30 to 8:30 tonight at the Conference Center at NorthPointe. The group is opposed to stem-cell research and views the frozen embryos as human beings. "We believe that every embryo is a baby that deserves a chance at life it was created for," program coordinator Megan Corcoran said. In the United States, there are more than 400,000 frozen embryos, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. About a dozen people have shown up to each of the handful of awareness-raising events the Snowflakes program has hosted, Corcoran said. The program matches the genetic parents and adoptive parents based on preferences of both. The genetic parents get first say about accepting a potential adoptive family and then the adoptive parents get to decide after they're given information about the genetic parents, including three generations of medical history. "Another large thing we use is the level of contact the genetic parents would like," Corcoran said. "It ranges from none to visitation." Once everything else is in place, the embryos -- usually about six -- are cooled with liquid nitrogen and shipped in special containers. Each embryo has about a 50 percent chance of surviving the thawing process before implantation. About 40 percent of efforts result in pregnancies. The cost is $8,000 for the adoptive family, not including medical costs. Donor families pay nothing. Brenda Barnett of Dublin and her 3-year-old son, Ryan, plan to attend the session tonight. Brenda and her husband, Jim, had a slim chance of conceiving themselves and were considering foreign adoption when a friend told them about the Snowflakes program. "I got excited, he got excited, we thought, 'That sounds like something perfect for us,' " she said yesterday. "My lifetime dream was always to be a mom." After an initial attempt with a family in Michigan that ended in a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, the Barnetts were matched with a family in Colorado who donated five embryos. In July 2003, she became pregnant with Ryan. "Having this joy here in my life is just amazing. I wouldn't trade it for a biological child because he's just so amazing," she said as Ryan chattered in the background. Kathryn Deiters, Nightlight's director of development, acknowledged that the program has its critics, mostly individuals who take issue with the use of the word adoption, preferring to look at the transfer of embryos as donations. "I can understand why some people would be upset by the notion that (groups are) calling this adoption," said Marc Spindelman, an Ohio State University law professor. "The reason this is being called adoption has more to do with the moral status of the embryo as a human being or not than it does anything else. "There's a way in which the attempt is to begin to weave into the law the notion that fertilized eggs are human beings." Throughout the United States, the law is largely silent on embryo donation. In Ohio, legislators passed a law that clarifies that a woman who gives birth to a baby after embryo implantation is the biological mother. Through the Snowflakes program, the Barnetts send e-mail and pictures to the genetic parents a few times a year and will wait to see whether Ryan someday wants to meet them, Mrs. Barnett said. They're eagerly awaiting another pregnancy and have matched with a family in Wisconsin that is donating 10 embryos. Mrs. Barnett, 37, said she wasn't thinking about the moral aspect of embryo adoption when she and her husband decided to go for it. "But I'm happy that we did this, that those families did this rather than destroying these lives." [log in to unmask] For additional health information, visit OhioHealth Rayilyn Brown Board Member AZNPF Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn