156 R.P. Fitzgerald and M. Legge
In terms of disposal of reproductive material, form and hence devel-
opmental potential mattered with respect to the difficulties that staff
encountered in disposing of them. Many staff casually joked about the
abundance of sperm in most samples (saving those from clients destined
to use ICSI) and had few difficulties in disposing of unwanted sperm.
Working with sperm was understood by many to be a low-status job
within the laboratory, and quite a few scientists laughed at how sperm
just ‘swim round and round the petri dish’. Eggs were understood to
be far more precious due to the difficulty in obtaining them. Many of
the staff had difficulties disposing of well-formed embryos. Frequently
this was expressed as a sadness for the abandonment of hope for further
children from the commissioning couple, or the stirring of a memory
of the staff’s own children and the potential for the embryo to hold
similar promise. One staff member didn’t have concerns about dis-
posing of embryos, because of a belief that ensoulment occurred only
after implantation. When queried about their experiences of client’s
reactions to disposal, all were unanimous in recognising the wide vari-
ety of responses from breezy unconcern to tears, ‘neurotic’ phone calls
and personal collection. Some staff offered an opportunity for ritual to
clients who indicated their wish to dispose of frozen embryos such as
taking them home or planting them under a tree. One of the laborato-
ries had developed a tiny flax basket as a receptacle for transporting the
embryo home. One scientist summed up their views as:
I don’t have a problem disposing of embryos that meet our proto-
cols for disposition – the technical chance of them becoming a baby is
so remote... however the beautiful embryos which you just know are
going to be babies and people send in their consents to dispose of them- I really don’t like that at all...I think the saddest cases are when one
partner wants to use her embryos and they’ve split up and then the other
doesn’t... you know basically those embryos got disposed of and [in this
particular case] she couldn’t use them and I think it’s so selfish of the guy
to take that attitude...
Thus, disposal was an area of ethical conflict for most of the embry-
ologists and as they obeyed disposition decisions to the letter, they
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