New record: 31-year-old ‘baby’ born in US

A recent birth in the US has set a new milestone in medicine: a boy was born from an embryo that had been frozen for more than three decades. This has sparked international interest, raising the question of how long human embryos can remain viable.

The baby, named Thaddeus Daniel Pierce , was born in Ohio after 30.5 years of cryopreservation. The embryo was frozen in May 1994 by Linda Archerd and her husband as part of an in vitro fertilization procedure, IFLScience reports.

After the birth of their daughter, the couple froze the remaining embryos. Although they later divorced, Archerd did not wish to throw away or donate the embryos anonymously. Instead, she chose to adopt embryos through a program that enables to identify donors and recipients.

In 2024, two of those embryos were transferred to Lindsey Pierce, who gave birth to Thaddeus nine months later.

“It’s like something from a sci-fi movie,” Pierce told MIT Technology Review.

Cryopreservation methods have advanced significantly since the early 1990s. Embryos created during that time were typically frozen using a slow-freezing method that carries a higher risk of damage during thawing.

But today, vitrification, a much faster method that is more effective at preserving embryo viability, is widely used. According to Beth Button, executive director of the Snowflakes embryo adoption program, “over 90% of clinics in the US would not have accepted these embryos.” But Thaddeus’s embryo survived the thawing, a remarkable feat of cryopreservation.

The case adds to the growing number of assisted reproductive technologies that began with the birth of Louise Brown in 1978. Since then, more than 13 million babies have been born using such methods.

Scientific advances have not only increased the success rate, but have also introduced new approaches, including the technique of maturing eggs outside the body, which has already resulted in live births. For families like Pierce’s, these advances have personal meaning.