Life on ice

Police cruisers typically escort heads of state, but on a November morning in 1995, the VIP heading down California's Highway 405 was an ordinary-looking moving truck. It was, however, carrying some particularly fragile cargo: several metal tanks, each just larger than a beer keg, containing a total of roughly 2,000 frozen human embryos. They were being transported from a scandal-plagued IVF clinic in Laguna Hills, Calif., to their new adoptive home in Newport Beach. Today, many still remain there, unclaimed. The embryos' unusual journey illustrates just how complicated the business of assisted reproduction can get. Newsweek