In Minneapolis yesterday, doctors announced that a test tube baby successfully saved 6 year-old Molly Nash.
Molly, who has the rare genetic disorder Fanconi anemia, would certainly have died if not for her brother, Adam, a test tube baby created using in vitro fertilization.
"The idea of having a baby and using umbilical cord cells to help a child is one thing. The new element is that they created a dozen or so embryos and implanted up to five. What got the attention of everyone is that they were able to find the good donor," said Jonathan Moreno, director of the University's Center for Biomedical Ethics.
Molly's parents had planned to have a second child. But the couple also knew that they both carried the recessive gene for Fanconi anemia, a gene equal to giving their child a death sentence. Children with the genetic blood disorder are prone to have developmental abnormalities and cancer. They don't live past adolescence.
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It is rare that two people both have the recessive gene that carries the disease. But the Nashes do. Their future offspring have a 25 percent chance to get the disease and die.
But the couple found a process that could help them. The process, called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), screens embryos to see which might not develop an incurable disease.
Adam, born Sep. 26, was one of the selected embryos allowed to develop to a full term baby. Once delivered, doctors drew some of his umbilical cord blood and transfused it to his sister.
Director of the University Infertility Clinic Dr. Bruce Bateman said that giving another child this blood has many benefits.
"Cord blood contains stem cells that make a lot of different things. These cells have a potential to make a lot of different things. If we infuse that to a child, that stands a chance to produce good things in the other child," Bateman said.
In the early 1980s, scientists studied the use of umbilical cord blood stem cells in lab animal transplants. By 1988, a North Carolina 6 year-old boy with Fanconi anemia was the first person in the world to get a transplant of cord stem cells. The transplant was successful but not easy to come by.
"It was the luck of the draw," Moreno said. But now, with new technology, scientists no longer rely on luck.
Some say this process lends itself to babies born as "biological insurance." Parents may not want the baby as much as his genes. Still, Bateman said that at his clinic, there aren't many factors that would hold him back from allowing a couple to have a test tube baby. The main factor is age - he discourages women over 40 from using in vitro fertilization.
Even so, he wouldn't know their intentions. After fertilization, the embryos are out of his hands. Moreno said specialists would then take over the job of screening embryos for the desirable gene.
So if a couple wanted to create a child just because it would have the correct gene, Bateman couldn't stop them, though he says it would be a divisive issue.
"When you're shifting to frivolous things, that's when it gets controversial. You can easily predict an outcry of the public when embryos are being discarded because of hair color," Bateman said.
Despite this, scientists still believe the Nashes' story gives new hope to families fated to produce genes for deadly diseases.
Referring to the ability to infuse umbilical cord blood to another ill individual as the first step, Moreno calls the embryo screening process with the Nashes as "a big second step"
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