Intruders not responsible for destroying embryos at east London fertility clinic, police insist

Intruders were not responsible for the destruction of embryos at an NHS fertility clinic, police have said, as internal investigations continue.

Last week, Homerton Fertility Centre in east London was ordered to close following concerns that 153 embryos, from 45 patients, may not have survived the freezing process or could not be found.

The regulator intervened after The Telegraph raised the concerns of whistleblowers who warned of bad practice and claimed that experimental techniques were being used for embryo freezing.

Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust said it had called in police to assess whether an outsider could have entered the storage facilities, but officers found no evidence of unauthorised access.

“We believe they were satisfied with the security,” a trust spokesman told the Mail on Sunday.

The Metropolitan Police said it had visited the unit but confirmed no criminal investigation was underway.

Errors in freezing process

Louise Ashley, chief executive of the trust, wrote to patients week to apologise and admitted that she was aware of ‘three separate incidents’ when errors had occurred in embryo freezing processes in the past year.

“Tragically this has, in some cases, resulted in a small number of embryos either not surviving or being undetectable,” she said, announcing that external clinical experts were investigating.

However, experts said it was unusual for embryos to vanish while in storage and become undetectable.

Professor Allan Pacey, a fertility expert from the University of Manchester, said: “I don’t know what they mean by “undetectable” in this instance.

“It’s certainly possible for embryos to die and break up so they can’t be found. But I think this is quite rare when they have got to the freezing stage, which is what I think they are talking about here.”

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said it had suspended the centre’s licence to operate with immediate effect because of “significant concerns about the clinic”.

Whistleblowers

Homerton has been under close scrutiny by the HFEA in recent years following multiple complaints from whistleblowers.

An inspection in August 2019 found that women were at risk of swabs being left inside their bodies during egg collection because staff were not following best practice.

The HFEA also received further complaints about the clinic’s leadership between 2021 and 2022, as well as warnings about working conditions, welfare, training, decision making and non-reporting of incidents.

In April 2022, the trust suspended fertility services for months because of dangerous staff shortages, however, despite the recurring problems, its three-year licence was renewed by the HFEA in May.

Sarah Norcross, director of the fertility charity Progress Educational Trust (PET), said: “It needs to be established, via thorough investigation, what has gone wrong at the clinic since last year’s inspection. This is necessary so that we can understand what has happened, and so that we can make sure it does not happen anywhere else.

“Patients informed that their embryos might be lost will be devastated by this news. Some of these patients may fear that they have lost their chance to become parents. How these patients will be compensated remains to be seen.”

Over the weekend, dozens of women came forward to report issues with their treatment at Homerton.

Emily Porter, 34, from Redbridge, east London, told The Sunday Times that she and her partner were treated so poorly they eventually opted to go private at a cost of £30,000.

‘Not the end of the world’

“I was told, ‘You’ve come in without a baby, so if you leave without one it’s not the end of the world’,” Miss Porter said.

Jessica O’Hara, 37, told the newspaper that being a patient at Homerton was “the worst time of my life”. She added: “There’s so much trauma from that point in time and it is entirely to do with how we were treated by staff.”

The trust said it had increased security and access points in the unit and has begun contacting all fertility patients as well as opening a helpline.

Guy’s Hospital in central London last month admitted that the eggs and embryos of 136 patients may never be viable after it used a faulty solution during the freezing process.