Pearl - March 31, 2025Modern Women HURT Themselves With Dumb Decisions ｜ Pearl Daily
Episode Stats
Words per minute
167.37758
Harmful content
Misogyny
25
sentences flagged
Toxicity
11
sentences flagged
Hate speech
14
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, we talk about IVF mistakes and why women are suing each other and their partners for them. We also hear from a woman whose embryos were accidentally left in a lab by mistake, and a woman who was duped by a lab technician.
Transcript
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And then the men watch it and they say, I can't stop them.
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Like, for example, Melania Trump is passing like an anti-nude images on the internet.
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You're trusting someone else to not share them.
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So knowing that, women can make the choice to not do it or know that it's a calculated risk.
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Now, instead, if things get leaked on the internet again, what do women do?
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These all become industries of women making stupid decisions and men realizing they can
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sue other people because women can't take accountability.
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You know, it's the same thing with the marriage.
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You know, women, you know, men know when they get married, it's a calculated risk.
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So they got to make their ex-husband's life a living hell.
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So maybe if enough of us speak out, there will be more regulation.
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There will be more protocol put into place, says Marissa, 36, who sued her LA fertility
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clinic in the fall, alleging that the embryos she and her partner intended to use to start
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a family has been, have been discarded by mistake.
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Cal Hone was diagnosed in her teens with severe endometriosis, a condition that can make it
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By 35, she had completed three painful egg retrievals.
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She and her partner, Steven Castaneda, were elated in late 2023 when they found out 16 of
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He told me that all of my embryos have been discarded.
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He described it as an error in the lab, she said.
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The weight of my medical condition, the weight of the years I spent collecting those eggs.
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I can't describe the rush of thoughts and the rush of emotions that overtook me.
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Cal Hone's lawsuit alleges that a lab employee had failed to label her embryos before placing
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them in an incubator, then threw away the unlabeled embryos.
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The clinic said it could not comment on an active lawsuit but denied the allegations in
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A conference between the judge and the opposing parties is scheduled for later this month to
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NBC's news analysis identified 82 lawsuits related to the allegations of human error from
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2019 to 2024 and over 13 being swapped embryos, egg or sperm.
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The cases involving equipment and product failures, meanwhile, included 176 related to a 2018
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storage tank failure at a fertility clinic in San Francisco called Pacific Fertility Center,
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which led to the destruction of about 2,500 eggs and 1,500 embryos.
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The tank's marker chart industries denied an allegation made in a class action suit that
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The clinic's parent company denied allegations that it had been negligent.
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Prelude and Pacific Fertility contend that the 2018 storage tank failure was caused by a
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defective tank, said Alexandria Preece Barlow, an attorney who represented Prelude in a class
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Many of the allegations against the clinic have gone into arbitration.
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However, in one that went to trial, a jury determined that the chart and the Pacific Fertility
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Center had been negligent and awarded five former patients a total of $15 million.
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Chart appealed and reached a confidential settlement in that case and others.
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Chart, Prelude Fertility and Pacific Fertility Center did not respond to requests for comment.
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However, the clinic told the NBC Bay Area shortly after the incident that it had bought and brought
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We are truly sorry that this happened for the anxiety that it will surely cause at the time.
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50-plus other lawsuits in NBC's news analysis were related to claims that a liquid used to help
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fertility eggs develop destroyed hundreds of embryos.
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The company that manufactured the solution, Copper Surgical, received several lots last year.
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Cooper Surgical did not respond to requests for comment in a statement to NBC last year.
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It said that it intended to recall proactively while investigating any potential issues.
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There is a bunch of issues that have been going on with IVF.
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So we're going to watch a video of another embryo mix-up.
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An extraordinary fertility clinic mix-up is talking about what happened to them for the first time.
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Ani and Ashot Manoukians say they've been devastated by what they call an unimaginable mix-up by the CHOP Fertility Center in Los Angeles involving three different couples.
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This is a big business and a disgusting business.
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The Manoukians say the Fertility Center transferred their embryo to an unidentified New York woman who then gave birth to their son along with another couple's baby.
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The New York couple is Korean-American and they were expecting to have two girls.
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A DNA test revealed the error and it was six weeks before the Manoukians finally got to see their son.
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A child robbed me of my ability to carry my own child, my baby boy, to be with him in the first couple of, you know, moments of his life, to nurse him, to just do like skin-on-skin contact.
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I am totally shocked and I am totally dismayed.
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Fertility doctor Jeffrey Steinberg says a mix-up like this is extraordinary.
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Before an embryo can go back into a patient, the computerized records have to be reviewed by the medical director, myself, and the physician if there's another physician involved.
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And then the entire staff gets together and question the patient.
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And further agonizing for the Manoukians, they say the fertility center never explained what happened to all of their embryos.
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Ani and Ashot have no idea if there is another baby.
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This guy right there, he sees an up-and-coming industry.
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I am going to get rich off of these women's decisions.
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In this world of theirs that they're unaware of right now.
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Now, Ani Manoukian says her son that she was finally united with is, in her words, a perfect baby.
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What was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of Alexander Cardinale's life, meeting his...
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...baby happened four months late, thanks to an apparent mix-up.
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In 2019, his wife Daphna gave birth to a baby that looked nothing like them.
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They'd used in vitro fertilization and immediately feared something had gone wrong.
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I think we were hoping if at least one of us was genetically related to her, then we could keep her.
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But I think the biggest fear in all of this is, like, am I going to lose my baby?
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According to their lawsuit, three months later, genetic testing showed their embryo had been switched with another couple's.
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The solution? Legally exchange the children.
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That our biological child was given to someone else, and the baby that I fought to bring into this world was not mine.
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Can you imagine giving birth and it's not your...
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The couple is suing their L.A. fertility doctor, clinic, and lab.
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...to remain anonymous, but reportedly plans to sue as well.
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While cases like this have happened in the U.S. before, they are exceedingly rare.
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The miraculous thing here is both women successfully gave birth and agreed to switch the baby.
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Imagine giving birth, going through all that, giving birth to someone else's kid, and you get nothing.
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I understand that there are a hundred different horrible outcomes, and this was the least horrible
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The Cardinalis say their pain is eclipsed by that of their older daughter.
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Captain Nocap says women have betrayed their governments.
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They're misled into thinking they can offset children until later.
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The brutal reality is that after 25, they're passed halfway, with the second leg harder.
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Who can't possibly understand why she lost the little sister she'd grown to love.
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A couple who dreamed of becoming parents to a healthy newborn, now suing their fertility clinic tonight.
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They said the clinic implanted the wrong embryo, which has now put their child's life at stake.
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We had visions of what his life was going to be like, living a normal life.
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When Melissa and Jason Diaz decided to start a family, they were determined not to pass on certain cancer-causing genes that run on their families.
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We wanted our children to not have any worry regarding these types of genetic mutations that we carry.
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So we try to do everything in our power to give them a fighting chance that life with a healthy life.
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So they chose to undergo genetic testing and in-vitro fertilization through Huntington Reproductive Center in Pasadena.
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But attorneys say the wrong embryo was transferred to Melissa, which carried the rare and deadly cancer gene they tried to eliminate by going through IVF.
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Just to know that he has to go through that when he didn't.
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And you actively worked to prevent this exact situation?
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Everything we could do that was in our power we tried to do.
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Everything available from technology to date, we did.
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And we followed all of their orders and everything that we needed to do.
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Melissa first noticed the error on a medical report she requested from HRC about 10 months after her son was born in 2021.
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Handwritten notes on that report indicated that the embryo, which became her baby boy, indeed carried the CDH1 gene, the very one that caused Jason's stomach cancer.
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We're newly re-monetized on the channel, so every super chat does help.
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They must be so, that must be so hard for these poor women to deal with like, wow.
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I don't feel bad at all, but I'm glad you have empathy, but I do not.
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I was hoping it wasn't real, hoping it was a mistake.
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When you first understood that the embryo that had been transferred did in fact carry that gene, what was your reaction?
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I felt like I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time again.
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After requesting her full medical records from the clinic, Melissa says she received an altered version of the initial report.
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On Wednesday, their attorney, Adam Wolfe, filed a lawsuit.
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Against the clinic and Dr. Bradford Kolb, claiming negligence, malpractice, battery, misuse of embryos, and fraudulent concealment.
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And maybe by having this conversation right now, we can lend our little bit of support to changing processes, to changing regulations,
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to having some sort of framework to minimize or hopefully completely eliminate.
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When you think about it, women are the biggest eugenicists.
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Like, women are the real racist sexists or whatever.
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Like, they'll abort their kid if it's not the right dad or the right sex.
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Like, they're the OG, like, eugenicists, when you think about it.
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Like, you ever see guys like baby mothers and you're like, why would you do that?
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But so when you think about it, like, women, yeah, there's a big focus on genes.
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Amish have zero cancer, diabetes, autism, $250,000 control group.
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So if you're not willing to go live like the Amish, I don't...
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Happy and healthy one-year-old, but will face the life-altering stomach removal surgery
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his dad underwent as a result of the embryo mix-up.
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What would justice look like for the two of you?
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I don't think there's anything that can justify what happened or what they did.
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He's still going to have to live his life differently
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because of something that we tried everything to prevent.
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Chelsea reached out to the Huntington Reproductive Center for a statement they have not yet.
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I mean, I don't really have an opinion on it one way or another, but that was almost...
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That's pretty understandable you don't want your kid to get cancer.
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Fertility specialists using assisted reproductive technology to make the pregnancy dreams of
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patients come true are now facing a new and complex ethical dilemma when it comes to what
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None of us were really trained on what to do with this.
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During the IVF process, doctors often create multiple embryos,
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which are then either implanted or frozen for use at a later time.
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If a couple decides they do not need the remaining embryos, they have the following options.
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They can destroy them, donate them to research or to another couple,
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or continue to pay storage fees, which could run anywhere from $400 to more than $1,000 a year.
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Yeah, so there's all these embryos that are just sitting, and none of these clinics know
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what to do with them, and they're not federally regulated.
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So what do you guys think realistically they're going to do with these embryos?
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In many cases, patients stop paying their storage bills and stop answering calls,
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leaving the clinics with what they call abandoned embryos.
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If you talk to patients when they're thinking about having a child,
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nobody thinks that they'll ever discard or abandon their embryos.
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Dr. Craig Sweet runs a fertility clinic in Florida.
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He says about a quarter of the frozen embryos at his clinic have been abandoned,
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and according to experts, it's a problem in fertility clinics across the country.
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Over time, more and more embryos have accumulated that have been abandoned.
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I know of organizations that have vats of abandoned embryos,
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It's unclear exactly how many frozen embryos have been abandoned nationwide.
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Some doctors estimate the number to be in the hundreds of thousands,
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while other studies suggest it could be in the millions.
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The fact that embryos are fertilized eggs, meaning they have a potential for life.
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Alyssa Strauss and her husband turned to IVF to conceive their second child
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after she was diagnosed with secondary infertility when her son was just five months old.
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By the way, when women are infertile, if it's not endometriosis,
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a lot of times they don't tell you this, it's an STD.
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It's like HPV or some other STD that left them that way.
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A lot of you guys get trapped where the woman says, oh, I'm infertile.
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They were faced with the decision of what to do with their remaining embryos.
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All of a sudden, you realize that you have these two things,
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but at the same time, they're kind of the most important things.
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Alyssa says she wasn't prepared to make the emotional decision.
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You know, you're talking to someone that's so desperate to have in the end just an embryo
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that's going to work out for them, and to kind of bring up, you might have extra.
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I don't know how you emotionally can handle that.
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The Strausses ultimately decided to donate their embryos to research,
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Doug MPA says 15% of women will be infertile in the U.S.,
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Well, it's because they're throwing it back, you know, throwing it back raw.
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They get too many gonorrhea diagnoses or whatever, and then boom.
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And then now, women are giving birth to kids with STDs.
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If you have an incurable STD that's going to be passed on to your kid,