Australia's IVF industry shaken after second Monash mistake
Monash IVF said a woman undergoing treatment at its Melbourne clinic was mistakenly implanted with her embryo instead of one created with her partner's sperm, as intended. The incident occurred on June 5 and is now being investigated by regulators.
The company said it was supporting the unidentified couple but did not elaborate on how the mistake was discovered or what the couple planned to do next. "The patient's embryo was mistakenly implanted under a treatment plan which called for an embryo from the patient's partner to be transferred," Monash IVF said in a statement.
The incident adds to the fallout from a separate case disclosed in April, in which a Brisbane woman gave birth to a stranger's child after an embryo mix-up in 2023. That case was widely reported as the first of its kind in Australia and shook public confidence in the sector.
"This mix-up, the second reported incident at Monash IVF, risks shaking confidence not just in one provider but across the entire fertility sector," said Hilary Bowman-Smart, a researcher and bioethicist at the University of South Australia.
Founded nearly 50 years ago, Monash IVF was behind the world's first IVF pregnancy and, according to industry figures, today, carries out nearly 25 percent of Australia's 100,000 assisted reproductive cycles annually.
The company's shares plunged 25 percent by midday on June 10, dragging them to just over half their value before the Brisbane incident. "We had thought the Brisbane clinic embryo transfer error was an isolated incident," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Craig Wong-Pan. "We believe there is now risk of a greater impact of reputational damage and market share losses to MVF's operations."
Monash IVF had already commissioned an independent investigation after the Brisbane case and said it would expand the inquiry's scope to include the new error. It has also begun installing additional interim safeguards around embryo verification.
The company reported the Melbourne incident to the Victorian Department of Health and the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee (RTAC), part of the Fertility Society of Australia.
Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said the department was investigating both the company and the incident. "Families should have confidence that the treatment they are receiving is done to the highest standard," she said. "It is clear Monash IVF has failed to deliver that, which is completely unacceptable."
Fertility Society president Petra Wale acknowledged the emotional toll on the couple involved but stressed that such mistakes remain rare. Society has repeated its call for nationally consistent laws around IVF.
Australia's IVF sector is currently overseen by a mix of state health departments and self-regulating industry bodies, a framework some experts say is overly complex.
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National Post
28 minutes ago
- National Post
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Winnipeg Free Press
a day ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
He earned a small town's trust. He owed $95 million in what authorities say was a Ponzi scheme
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National Observer
4 days ago
- National Observer
Trudeau-era climate policies hang in the balance as Carney seeks grand bargain to build
As Prime Minister Mark Carney's government prepares its fall budget, discussions of striking a 'grand bargain' between the environment and economy are raging. The tariff war with the United States is the backdrop to the grand bargain negotiations. Carney wants to strengthen the Canadian economy with his major projects agenda, and needs the provinces and territories working cooperatively with him on his vision. But some premiers see an opportunity to knock down climate policies that would further unleash the fossil fuel sector as the price of cooperation. The other big picture consideration is the climate crisis, and growing urgency to slash emissions to prevent more damage. Last year was the country's most expensive year on record for extreme weather exacerbated by the warming atmosphere, clocking in at over $8 billion in insured damages alone, according to a recent report from Swiss Re. 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It is not known precisely what was discussed, but those oil and gas executives have recently been on the record demanding the gutting of environmental regulations they claim choke their growth. 'We continue to believe the federal government's cap on emissions creates uncertainty, is redundant, will limit growth and unnecessarily result in production cuts, and stifle infrastructure investments,' reads an open letter from 38 oil and gas companies published after April's federal election. However, oil and gas executives aren't stopping there. They are pushing for a major clawback of environmental safeguards, and want the West Coast tanker ban and the federal industrial carbon pricing scrapped. Carney promised to strengthen the latter during his campaign and, if it were abandoned, it would give companies virtually unfettered ability to spew carbon pollution. The former, meanwhile, is seen as a precursor to reviving the Northern Gateway pipeline. That executive meeting was far from the only one with federal officials. The Canadian Association for Petroleum Producers, the apex lobby group for the fossil fuel industry, recorded 13 meetings in May and June, the most recent months available on the federal lobbyist registry, with government officials like PMO policy coordinator Joshua Swift, Hodgson and his chief of staff Eamonn McGuinty, and several deputy ministers at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Among the organization's stated list of priorities are accelerating approval of major projects like LNG terminals and persuading the government to 'not proceed' with the proposed oil and gas emissions cap to focus on 'other effective collaborative solutions.' On a recent earnings call, Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel, one of the signatories to the open-letter, told investors the federal government was not creating the conditions for investment to occur, pointing to the emissions cap and West Coast tanker ban as obstacles. In another breath, he assured investors the company would deliver between $40 billion and $45 billion in dividends to shareholders over the next five years. Other Options In 2022, the federal government presented two options when developing the cap. The selected option was a new cap and trade system, but the other option was setting a specific carbon price that would make it worthwhile for the oil and gas industry to drive emissions down. It's possible Carney will reach back to that draft paper for guidance. Privately, some climate advocates who had pushed hard for an emissions cap are coming to grips with the probability it will be axed and are now seeking strong alternatives. If some groups are quietly determining their position, others are vocal. In July, Clean Prosperity — which had never been in favour of the cap — recommended Ottawa cancel the cap and the clean electricity regulations, while strengthening carbon pricing. The group says those policies have 'created significant tensions with provinces, especially Alberta and Saskatchewan,' and would be 'unnecessary with strong carbon markets.' Clean Prosperity recorded eight meetings in May and June with federal officials, according to the federal lobbyist registry. They include two conversations with Swift, as well as meetings with Caroline Lee, chief of staff to Environment and Climate Change Minister Julie Dabrusin, Natural Resources Minister Hodgson and his chief of staff, and Aaron Wudrick, director of policy under Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Similarly, the Canadian Climate Institute weeks later published its own study arguing that strengthening industrial carbon pricing and dropping the cap is the better path for emissions reductions. The reasons are technical, but essentially the group's modelling found that overlapping the emissions cap with carbon pricing policies could inadvertently weaken decarbonizing efforts. Donner said it's possible to achieve the same carbon pollution reductions using an improved industrial price, but unless there is a credible proposal for how that will be done, it's risky. 'We removed the consumer carbon price, but we've yet to replace it with anything,' he said. 'So that took one of the jenga blocks out. You can't keep pulling blocks out. At some point the tower is going to collapse.' Donner said any negotiation with the provinces has to involve strengthening the industrial carbon price at its centre. 'The government can't give in on that,' he said. 'The industrial pricing system, if strengthened, can be a foundation of climate policy going forward. It is not, however, nearly enough on its own. 'We need complimentary efforts on transportation, buildings, electricity, industrial policy and other areas not just to cut emissions, but to prepare Canada for a low-carbon world.' 'Just fossil fuel deals' Catherine Abreu, another member of the Net Zero Advisory Body and director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said there's no evidence any grand bargain has actually achieved anything meaningful for Canadians. 'They're not bargains; they're actually just fossil fuel deals,' she said. She pointed to the Trans Mountain pipeline that cost Canadian taxpayers over $34 billion, and the consumer carbon price that Carney cancelled in March. Another boondoggle was a 2016 proposal called the 100 megatonne cap that was supposed to limit oil and gas emissions in Alberta by introducing a carbon price on the oil sands in exchange for allowing some fossil fuel infrastructure expansion, she said. The 100MT cap 'did nothing to slow the expansion of the oil sands and … just greenwashed the activities of the oil and gas companies that were continuing to lobby hard against climate policies,' Abreu said. Today's discussion of 'decarbonized oil' — a euphemism discredited by experts as "marketing speak' but which Carney has said is crucial to his grand bargain with Alberta, is framed similarly to the discussions around the 100MT cap. 'Deconarbonized oil' is widely accepted to mean oil production paired with carbon capture technology that by design does not capture the majority of emissions associated with the fuel's lifecycle. When used, the technology routinely fails to meet its targets, and also only applies to the emissions required to extract and transport it, but not for when it is actually burned, which is where the majority of emissions come from. In 2022, more than 400 experts urged the federal government to abandon its carbon capture plans citing the risk of locking in fossil fuel production and ruining the ability of Canada to meet its emission reduction goals. The flagship carbon capture project would be the Pathways Alliance's proposed trunkline to pipe carbon dioxide captured from 13 oilsands sites in northern Alberta to an underground storage site south of Cold Lake at a cost of $16.5-billion — at least half of which it wants taxpayers to pay for. Two government sources
