Consent to treatment and storage
You must consent to your eggs, sperm or embryos being used in treatment, stored, or donated to another person or to a research project.
The law allows you to specify any conditions that you want when giving consent, and those conditions must be followed.
What form must consent take?
Consent must be given in writing and signed (although there are some special rules which allow a person who is mentally capable but physically incapacitated to ask someone else to sign for them). In practice, you normally confirm your consent by completing an HFEA form at your clinic, although consent is equally valid in another written form (such as a letter).
Before giving consent, you must have been offered counselling and given proper information about the implications of your treatment or of donation.
Exceptions to the consent requirement
As from 1 October 2009, there are some exceptional circumstances in which eggs, sperm or embryos can be stored without consent:
- Children. Eggs or sperm from a child can be stored without consent if he or she is about to undergo medical treatment that will impair his or her fertility. A doctor must certify that storage is in his or her best interests.
- Adults. Eggs or sperm from an adult can be stored without consent if a person is temporarily mentally incapacitated (for example after an accident) and expected to undergo medical treatment that will significantly impair his or her fertility. Again, a doctor must certify that storage is in his or her best interests.
In both cases, the eggs or sperm can only be stored; they cannot be used in treatment unless the person becomes capable and gives consent. The rules also do not allow gametes to be stored after someone’s death.
Consent can also be given on behalf of a child or a person without capacity to create an embryo for research purposes in certain specified circumstances.
Withdrawal or variation of consent
You can vary or withdraw your consent by giving signed notice in writing to the person keeping your gametes or embryos.
You can withdraw consent at any time before your gametes or embryos are ‘used’ (placed in the body of a woman or used for research).
Consent in relation to embryos
In relation to embryos, the right to withdraw consent belongs to each gamete provider (including donors). Either can ask for the embryo to be destroyed.
Where an embryo is in storage and one of the gamete providers withdraws consent to storage, UK fertility clinics have to follow a strict procedure. The person keeping the embryo must take all reasonable steps to notify everyone for whom the embryo was to be ‘used in treatment’. This included the other gamete provider (if not a donor) and, in donation cases, the original intended recipients even though these people have no genetic stake in the embryo.
Storage of the embryo then remains lawful for 12 months, although it cannot be used in treatment during this time unless both gamete providers consent. If all the people notified confirm that they are happy for the embryo to be destroyed, it can be allowed to perish before the end of the cooling-off period. If not, the embryo must be held in storage for 12 months, giving the person who has withdrawn consent the opportunity to change his or her mind before the embryo has to be destroyed. If he or she does not change his or her mind, the embryo is destroyed at the end of the year.
Consent in relation to donor gametes stored for siblings
If you have conceived a child with donor sperm or eggs (or donated embryos), you might want to store any surplus for future children, so that your children are full genetic siblings.
The basic consent rules still apply, even if you have paid to reserve the gametes or embryos for your own use. Your donor (as a gamete provider) can withdraw his consent to storage at any time before the gametes or embryos are used in your treatment.
In relation to gametes, the person keeping them must allow them to perish immediately. If embryos have been created with the gametes, the statutory one year cooling-off period applies before the embryos can be destroyed.
How we can help
Contact us if you would like our help with:
- Advice on how the law applies to you
- Disputes between gamete providers or intended parents in relation to embryos in storage
- Disputes between partners, or between donors and recipients, in relation to donor gametes stored for siblings.
