00:00And I think this kind of comes down to two main things.
00:04The first is that there is this growing awareness of egg freezing.
00:08So we see it discussed quite frequently in the media.
00:11We see the clinics themselves putting a lot of effort into, say, marketing and promoting
00:15this procedure.
00:16We also see it a lot on social media with people kind of sharing their experiences freezing
00:20their eggs.
00:21So I think that there is a lot more awareness of it.
00:23The other thing which I think was really kind of stimulated and came out of the pandemic
00:28was this shift in priorities where people were kind of forced to really reevaluate what's
00:32important to them.
00:33And for a lot of people, that was having a family.
00:35And I think that kind of correlated and translated into more people freezing their eggs.
00:40So the data around this is still somewhat emerging, but just given that the kind of
00:44increase we're seeing has been quite recent.
00:47But the data that we do have suggests that very few people do return.
00:51And the reason for this is because for a lot of people who freeze their eggs, they actually
00:55can conceive without assistance.
00:56So they don't need their frozen eggs and don't need to return to use them.
01:00The other group of people who haven't returned, they haven't returned because they're either
01:04not yet ready to have children or their circumstances don't align with that right now.
01:08So maybe they don't have a partner and they're not really kind of willing to kind of go down
01:12this path just yet.
01:13There are storage limits, but these do differ between state and territories.
01:17So in the state of Victoria, for example, eggs can be frozen for 10 years unless an
01:22extension is granted, and that is granted if it's considered there to be reasonable
01:27grounds for an extension.
01:28So we do know that these limits do have impact on patients.
01:31So patients have told us that these limits can be quite a big source of stress for them.
01:37And just kind of describing that these limits create an external pressure that essentially
01:41forces them to make decisions about their reproductive plans that they might not be
01:45ready to make yet.
01:46Other patients kind of talk about these limits being unjustly unfair or that they actually
01:51discriminate against people with infertility.
01:53So we do know that these storage limits are having an impact on patients.
01:58I don't know if we'd all run out of them because it's not like, you know, today we have, you
02:02know, a certain amount of storage and tomorrow that's changed.
02:05I think that this will be kind of a gradual accumulation of eggs.
02:09But I do know anecdotally that clinics are preparing for this.
02:12So some clinics have expanded their storage facilities to be able to, you know, kind of
02:16cope with this increase in materials going into storage.
02:20And other clinics have kind of plans for future expansion so that they can keep up
02:23with this demand if the current trends continue.
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