Thursday, March 31, 2005

Tagging IVF eggs, sperm and embryos

Never thought radio frequency ID (RFID) would get into this arena. Apparently a UK couple finally conceived a child by in vitro fertilization (IVF)--but the child turned out to be of mixed race while they were both Caucasian.

Employees at IVF clinics are just likely as any worker to make a mistake--except the consequences of mixing genetic material can be much weightier. The solution may be to apply electronic tags, a la RFID, that set off an alarm if the wrong eggs and sperm are brought too close together. They're also considering using barcodes--talk about having to write small...

So with RFID all they have to worry about is whether the low-frequency waves might hurt the eggs or sperm--and/or whether the electronic alarm that's loud enough to alert a possibly sleepy employee might harm the genetic material--or just plain scare the bejeepers out of the embryos.

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