Parents denied embryos left by only child killed in accident  

失独老人起诉争夺冷冻胚胎 法院判决：不能继承

2014年5月15日，中国首例冷冻胚胎继承权纠纷案在江苏宜兴法院一审宣判。原告沈新南起诉他的亲家，要求继承儿子沈杰和儿媳身亡后留下的冷冻受精胚胎。四位失独老人为争夺子女留下的冷冻受精胚胎诉诸法院，一审却以原、被告双方均无法获得继承权收场。[查看全文]

(ECNS) -- Parents of a deceased couple who left frozen embryos in a hospital were refused ownership of the embryos by a court in Yixing, Jiangsu province on Thursday, the Beijing News reported.

In China's first legal case involving the inheritance of frozen embryos, the court ruled that embryos obtained through surgery cannot be inherited or transferred.

A frozen embryo is a "special object" which can develop into life, said Lu Yaqin, the judge presiding over the case. It is the ethical nature of the embryo that distinguishes it from other objects that can be inherited, she said.

Shen Xinnan, the 52-year-old plaintiff in the case, lost his only son and daughter-in-law in a car accident on March 20. The young couple died five days ahead of embryo transplantation surgery scheduled at Nanjing's Gulou Hospital.

Shen and the parents of his daughter-in-law requested repeatedly that the hospital hand over the embryos, but they were rejected every time.

The nature of frozen embryos has not been officially defined and the hospital could not transfer the frozen embryos to the family, as China has strict requirements for the disposal and management of frozen embryos, said Zheng Zhelan, an attorney for the hospital.

"The only way to keep the embryos alive is to have them implanted in a surrogate mother, but that is against the law in China," Zheng added.

But Guo Wei, Shen's lawyer, said the couple only intended to buy more time for the embryos by transferring them to other hospitals.

Zheng also said that although the hospital has the ability to preserve embryos for years, the couple signed a document in 2012 authorizing their embryos to be destroyed a year later.

The one-year deadline has passed, and the parents of the dead couple are worried that the embryos may be destroyed.

The parents said they would appeal to a higher court to get the embryos and wait for the country to end its surrogacy ban, since "the embryos are the only hope for the two families."

As China's first legal dispute over the inheritance of frozen embryos, the case has exposed a legal vacuum in the regulations, which ambiguously define a frozen embryo as "something" that is neither a human nor an object.