In 1990 a couple underwent In Vitro Fertilization. They eventually had a healthy baby. They also, as is common, had a number of microscopic embryos that hadn't been implanted, but were viable. They decided to anonymously donate them.
Now, one of those embryos has produced a little boy, 20 years after being created. This May, a 42-year-old woman gave birth to that boy, as reported in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Frozen embryos are something of a new frontier in medicine and ethics. Last week Robert Edwards won the Nobel prize for developing IVF. But the questions surrounding the leftover embryos is still being struggle with. Recently NPR's Robert Siegel talked to Jeff Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School, about just this issue.
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