The world’s “oldest baby” has been born in the United States from an embryo that was frozen in 1994, reports The Guardian.
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was born on 26 July in Ohio to Lindsey and Tim Pierce, using an “adopted” embryo from Linda Archerd (62), from more than 30 years ago.
In the early 1990s, Archerd and her then husband decided to try in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after struggling to become pregnant. In 1994, four embryos resulted: 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.
“We didn’t go into it thinking we would break any records,” Lindsey told the MIT Technology Review, which first reported the story. “We just wanted to have a baby.”
Archerd was awarded custody of the embryos after divorcing her husband. She then found out about embryo “adoption”, a type of embryo donation in which both donors and recipients have a say in who receives the embryos.
Archerd’s preferences for a white Christian couple led to the Pierces adopting the embryo.
“We had a rough birth, but we’re both doing well now,” Lindsey said.
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.
In the UK, the proportion of IVF births has increased from 1.3% in 2000 to 3.1% in 2023, the equivalent of one in 32 UK births, roughly one child in every classroom.
For women aged 40 to 44, 11% of UK births were a result of IVF, up from 4% in 2000, accounting for 0.5% of all births, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority (HFEA).
In the US, about 2% of births are from IVF.
The Guardian article – World’s ‘oldest baby’ born from embryo frozen in 1994 (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Heart defect risk for babies conceived through IVF – Swedish study
Increased risk of certain cancers for children conceived from frozen embryos
No milestone gaps between IVF-conceived children and their peers, large study finds