ABSTRACT
The establishment and maintenance of pertinent quality control protocols, procedures, and the implementation of these issues continues to elude many in vitro fertilization (IVF) programs today. Numerous attempts have been made to establish meaningful quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) programs. However, most are impractical, expensive, and shed very little light on the potential pitfalls that may exist in our IVF laboratories. Yet, without some form of QC and QA the ability to trace deficiencies in an IVF laboratory becomes exceedingly difficult. One particular constituent that has been quality assured to extreme measures is culture medium. At some point in time we have decided that optimal culture conditions for mouse embryos would also be acceptable for human embryos. However, considerable evidence and experience now exist that indicate that mouse embryos are not the most appropriate model for humans. In other words, we have erroneously decided that if a particular medium is of good enough quality for mouse embryos then it must be good enough for human embryos.
