Tiffany Score and Steven Mills accused IFV Life, Inc., an Orlando fertility clinic, for implanting Score with the wrong embryo , reports The New York Post.
The lawsuit was filed January 22 with the Orange County Circuit Court against the clinic and the head reproductive endocrinologist, Dr. Milton McNichol. It seeks emergency court action to prompt the clinic to alert affected patients, pay for genetic testing, and disclose those that have been impacted.
Back in 2020, the couple froze three viable embryos with the clinic, which claimed “advanced fertility care” and “cutting-edge technology.” Score was implanted with the embryo in April 2025 and delivered the baby December 11. However, the baby “displayed the physical appearance of a racially non-Caucasian child,” and genetic testing later confirmed that the child was not biologically theirs.
The mix-up has also caused them to fear someone else could be pregnant with or raising their child. And while they have an “intensely strong emotional bond” with the child and would be willing to continue raising her, they feel a legal and moral obligation to find the genetic parents and return the child should they want her.
Dr. David Prentice is the president and founding board member of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology. He spoke with Jody Hice on Washington Watch, agreeing that the situation is complicated because IVF itself is complicated.
“It's really a business; it's an industry. It's not so much a medical practice but as a way to make a lot of embryos, a lot of human beings, and then try to get them to the point of birth but for an exorbitant price,” explains Prentice.
He is thankful that this little girl is alive, calling her a survivor. As he says, at most about 10% of the embryos that are created during the IVF procedure ever make it to live birth and up to half of the ones that are frozen do not survive the thawing process.
The industry is mostly unregulated, he says.
“They make a lot of claims about how they will produce a child for these infertile couples, but then they really don't follow any standard medical practice. There's no database in terms of following these little ones and their parents as they go through, and it really needs a lot of scrutiny and oversight,” says Prentice.
The results can be stunning — a mother carrying a child to term and giving birth only to learn that the baby is not biological hers. The question arises over who has the legal right to the child, and Prentice informs that family law does not really address these issues in IVF.
“The genetic parents, you would think, have some claim for this child, but they can't even locate them at this point. The mom and dad who gestated and birthed this little cute baby, they obviously have some sort of parental rights,” states Prentice, “but parental rights aren't really given much consideration in the IVF industry.”
Know who you're freezing
Prentice says that protocol is supposed to ensure the embryos are treated with the utmost care as they are just embryonic-stage children.
“If you're going to put them in this freezer, then they should be somehow identified and kept track of so that you know where every little embryonic child is and how the disposition takes place. Are they left in the freezer? Did they die in the process? Are they transferred to the womb and so on?” says Prentice.
However, he reiterates once again how little regulation and standard protocol is involved in this “wild west industry.”
“It's not a very life-affirming and certainly not a life-sparing practice,” comments Prentice.
