An I.V.F. Mix-Up and an Impossible Choice

Hey, it's Michael. A little bit of news from us. From here on out, Natalie, Rachel, and I are gonna be hosting new episodes of The Daily on Sundays. It's a chance to tell all kinds of stories that we have a harder time covering during the week. And we're genuinely really excited about this, and we hope that you are too. You can listen to the first of these this Sunday. So tune in. And now, here's today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. For millions of families, IVF is a modern medical miracle. But for a small number of parents, the largely unregulated field can go terribly wrong. Today, Pseudomonas brings us the remarkable story of how two families navigated an unthinkable IVF mistake that will connect them for the rest of their lives. It's Friday, January 16. Sue, welcome back. Thank you so much. So you're fast becoming the family correspondent here on The Daily. You have come on the show to talk about motherhood, menopause, siblings, how siblings shape one another's destiny. I'm curious how you first discovered the story that we're gonna be talking about in today's edition of Pseudomonas Family Correspondent. Yeah. I mean, for whatever reason, I am someone maybe because I was the youngest of three and always was kind of the observer. I've always had this interest in how families work. So both from my own childhood, but also as the mother of fraternal twins myself. Mhmm. But there was one fundamental way that American families have changed over the past few decades that I hadn't really explored, and that's how some families now can start. And tell me what you mean. Well, I'm talking about something that we kind of take for granted, but is really quite revolutionary in the history of humanity, which is IVF or in vitro fertilization. Mhmm. Everybody seems to know somebody who was either conceived that way or has turned to it, but it really is for many people, I think, one of the great miraculous and meaningful scientific advancements of the twentieth century. Right. It allows women to put off having kids until later in life. It allows women not to worry so much about the aging of their eggs. It allows people who have infertility for one reason or another to conceive. And I might add that I include my own family in this history. Your children are IVF babies. Yes. They are well aware, and I don't think they'd mind my sharing that. But maybe because it was my experience and because I know the industry to be kind of shockingly under regulated, I have always been curious about what exactly is happening behind the scenes and what kind of possibility is there for error. And when that does happen, what can the consequences really turn out to be for people? Mhmm. So I started looking into stories about IVF that had unusual twists and …