In a groundbreaking development in fertility science, an Ohio couple has given birth to a baby boy using an embryo that had been frozen for more than 30 years.
Lindsey Pierce (35) and Tim Pierce (34), who live in London, Ohio, became proud parents to Thaddeus Daniel Pierce last Saturday. The couple had been trying to conceive for the past seven years, and now they’ve welcomed a child through an embryo that was originally created in 1994.
The embryo used for Thaddeus' birth was one of four created by Linda Archerd, now 62, through in vitro fertilization (IVF) over three decades ago. At that time, one embryo was implanted in Archerd herself, resulting in the birth of her daughter—who is now 30 and has a child of her own.
The remaining embryos were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored for future use. In November 2024, one of those preserved embryos was transferred to Lindsey Pierce, leading to this remarkable birth, as reported by BBC.
After her divorce, Archerd was granted custody of the frozen embryos. Later, she discovered Nightlight Christian Adoptions, an agency that offers a “Snowflakes” embryo adoption program. This unique program allows embryo donors to choose adoptive families based on shared faith, values, and ethnicity.
Archerd specifically wanted the embryo to go to a white, Christian, married couple. When she first saw baby Thaddeus' photo, she told MIT Technology Review, “The first thing that I noticed when Lindsey sent me his pictures is how much he looks like my daughter when she was a baby. I pulled out my baby book and compared them side by side, and there is no doubt that they are siblings.”
The embryo transfer was carried out by a fertility clinic led by Dr. John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist and member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. He is known for advocating embryo adoption as a way to reduce the vast number of embryos kept in storage.
In a statement published by The Guardian, Gordon said, “We have certain guiding principles, and they’re coming from our faith. Every embryo deserves a chance at life and the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient.”
Though this case now holds the record for the longest time an embryo has been frozen before resulting in a live birth, the Pierces said they weren’t chasing headlines. “We didn’t go into this thinking about records — we just wanted to have a baby,” Lindsey Pierce explained.
According to BBC, the previous record was held by twins born in Oregon in 2022. Those embryos had been frozen in 1992, which was two years less than the embryo used for Thaddeus.
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a fertility method in which eggs are collected from a woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. The resulting embryos can either be transferred into the womb immediately or frozen and stored for future implantation.
