Fact Check: Baby Born in 2017 from Embryo Originally Frozen in 1992?
By Madison Dapcevich,
2024-09-08
Claim:
A baby named Emma Gibson, born in 2017 from an embryo frozen in 1992, was carried and birthed by her non-biological mother, who herself was born in 1991.
Emma Gibson was conceived on Oct. 14, 1992. However, rather than being born nine months after conception, she was frozen as an embryo. More than 24 years later, she was thawed and, following IVF, was delivered on Nov. 25, 2017, by her non-biological mother, Tina Gibson, who herself was born in 1991, a year before Emma was conceived.
The baby's story spread across social media platforms in the years following her birth. Examples appeared on X , Facebook , TikTok , and Reddit , the latter of which had received more than 36,000 upvotes as of this writing.
Research showed this story was legitimate, which is why we rated this claim as "True."
In an article published on Dec. 19, 2017, mother Tina spoke with NBC Tennessee affiliate WBIR, which said baby Emma had attained, at the time, the "all-time record for the longest-frozen embryo to come to birth." The publication further wrote:
Emma was frozen on Oct. 14, 1992, and thawed by NEDC lab director Carol Sommerfelt on March 13, 2017. The NEDC said Tina became pregnant with Emma as a result of a frozen embryo transfer, or FET, conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Keenan.
The NEDC — National Embryo Donation Center — is a nonprofit organization that houses frozen, unused embryos for other people to adopt in the hope of getting pregnant through in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
"We had our medical library, which is very good at finding things, look to see if they could find anything older than that and they could not," Keenan told NBC News . "But it is kind of neat that this embryo was conceived just a year or so before the mother was."
Before Emma's birth, the oldest known frozen embryo resulting in a successful birth was 20 years old, according to a 2011 study .
Emma's supposed record was later surpassed in 2020 by her sister Molly, who herself spent more than 27 years as a frozen embryo, according to the NEDC . Molly was also conceived through an FET and was likewise birthed by Tina Gibson. According to the BBC , Molly and Emma are genetic siblings.
"Both embryos were donated and frozen together in 1992, when Tina Gibson was around a year old," the media outlet wrote in December 2020.
I wonder if they will live normal, healthy lives, or if they will suffer consequences earlier than expected from being someone else's "human experiment".
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