What was earmarked as the demise of 47XXY and other sex chromosome variations has hit a major snag and one it will undoubtedly find difficult to recover from.

A heartbroken woman has launched a multi-million-dollar class action against one of Australia’s leading IVF clinics, saying her chances of falling pregnant have been scuttled after a controversial genetic test labelled her embryos as “abnormal”.

The class action centres on the way in which Monash IVF conducted genetic testing on embryos to uncover abnormalities.

There are two ways to conduct such testing: the first method is through a biopsy, which involves taking a tissue sample from an embryo, a method that is considered invasive.

The second method is called non-invasive pre-implantation genetic testing and involves collecting DNA from the culture that the embryo has been growing in while in the laboratory.

According to court documents, lawyers alleged that Monash IVF told patients including Ms Bopping that the two tests were “identical” in 95 per cent of cases.

In November 2019, Ms Bopping had the non-invasive testing done on an embryo and was informed that the results were “abnormal”.

As a result, she decided not to pursue inserting the embryo.

Her lawyers now say she was the victim of “false, misleading and deceptive” behaviour because she was not told that the non-invasive type of testing could return a false-positive.

Monash IVF has since suspended the non-invasive testing.

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