An Ohio couple, Lindsey and Tim Pierce, had a baby from an embryo frozen for over 30 years. The embryo, created in 1994, was transferred to Lindsey in 2024.
In a significant breakthrough, an Ohio couple welcomed a baby developed from an embryo that had been frozen for over 30 years.
Lindsey Pierce (35) and Tim Pierce (34) of London, Ohio, who were trying to conceive for the last seven years, finally welcomed Thaddeus Daniel Pierce into the world last week on Saturday.
The embryo was one of the four produced by Linda Archerd, now 62, using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in 1994. Among the four embryos, one was transferred to Archerd and resulted in the birth of a daughter, who is now 30 and mother to a 10-year-old. The other embryos were cryopreserved and stored, as per the report by BBC.
In November 2024, one embryo was moved to Lindsey after being cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen for approximately 30 years, the report added.
Following a divorce, Archerd was awarded custody of the embryos. She then found out about Nightlight Christian Adoptions and their “Snowflakes” program, which allows donors to select adoptive families based on values like religion and ethnicity.
Archerd had a preference for her embryo to be “adopted” by a white, Christian married couple.
“The first thing that I noticed when Lindsey sent me his pictures is how much he looks like my daughter when she was a baby. I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings,” she said to MIT Technology Review.
The fertility clinic that transferred the embryo is run by John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist and Reformed Presbyterian who is working to reduce the number of embryos in storage, the report added.
“We have certain guiding principles, and they’re coming from our faith. Every embryo deserves a chance at life and that the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient,” he said as reported by The Guardian.
In a statement, Lindsey and Tim Pierce said the clinic’s support was just what they needed.
“We didn’t go into this thinking about records — we just wanted to have a baby,” Lindsey Pierce said.
According to experts, this instance breaks the previous record, which was set by twins born in Oregon in 2022 from embryos frozen in 1992, the BBC report added.
