Barcodes may help protect couples seeking IVF

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Sperm and eggs from couples seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) could in the future be barcoded to avoid emotionally devastating mix-ups, according to Britain’s human fertility watchdog.

The move is designed to prevent a repeat of the case in 2002 when two white parents using IVF had mixed race twins after a clinic error.

“We are always looking for new ways to ensure safety and consistency in laboratory practice,” a spokesman for the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said on Wednesday.

"We have a panel of experts on our Safety and New Technologies advisory group who are looking at developments and assessing the evidence as it comes in. We don’t expect major changes in the short term,” he told Reuters.

Barcoding is already widely used to identify donated blood and could in principle be applied to human IVF, Steve Troup from Liverpool’s Women’s Hospital told the HFEA annual meeting in February.

He said patients canvassed said they approved the principle and believed it would be better than the current cumbersome process of manual witnessing of donated samples.

The barcoded tags would be attached to the base of containers holding the samples and a computer would trigger an alarm if they did not match.

A possible alternative would be to use low frequency passive radio tags attached in place of the barcodes to fulfil the same foolproof function of sample verification. 

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