Test-tube baby born with task: Give his sister a transplant

�By Rick Weiss The Washington Post A Colorado couple used genetic tests to create a test-tube baby that would have the exact type of cells desperately needed to save their 6-year-old daughter, doctors said Monday.

The case represents the first time a couple is known to have screened embryos before implanting one in the mother's womb for the purpose of saving the life of a sibling.

The test-tube baby, Adam Nash, was born in Denver on Aug. 29. Doctors collected cells from his umbilical cord, a painless procedure, and on Sept. 26 infused them into the circulatory system of his sister, Molly. The girl is recuperating in a Minneapolis hospital, and within about a week doctors should know whether the procedure was successful.

Whether or not the transplant works, doctors and ethicists said, the procedure is both a promising and worrisome harbinger of where scientific advances are taking human reproduction in the near future -- at least for those who can afford to take that path.

On the one hand, experts said, that future will be one in which the power of genetics and embryo cell research will lead to novel therapies for incurable diseases. In this case, the girl suffers from an inherited bone-marrow deficiency that is universally fatal without a transplant like the one she got from her newborn brother.

"We knew we were running out of time,"  said Charles Strom, director of medical genetics at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where the genetic testing was done. Now, he said, the girl has an 85 percent to 90 percent chance of being largely free of the marrow disease.

On the other hand, the new work also points to a future in which parents will have unprecedented options to choose the traits of their children, for whatever practical or capricious reason they may have.

"You could say it's quickly becoming like buying a new car, where you decide which package of accessories you want," said Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics. "I suspect that it's only because we don't yet have the tests that we're not having parents asking for embryos without a predisposition to homosexuality or for kids who will grow to more than 6 feet tall."

In the case of the Nash family, of Englewood, Colo., Molly was born with Fanconi anemia, an inherited disorder that causes a massive failure of bone-marrow cell production.

www.aamen.org                                  www.oxbows.com Amen Ministries of Austin��///� Oxbows Ministries International�                       P.O. Box 27683 - Austin, Texas� 78755

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of themselves ... " (2Time. 3-1-2)          We are at the threshold of attempting to manipulate any and all things in order to satisfy man's craving and lust for ultimate power ... to create life and change the status quo ... God's "Quo Status".  ONLY GOD can create life and satan can only imitate or counter- feit what God has already completed.  To clone another human being to satisfy our lust for perfection is tantamount to denying the ministry of the Holy Spirit to bring us into perfection ... "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor. 3:18). The excuses to be used for "designer genetics", organ cloning and cell replacement are all rooted in man's insatiable desire to change the order  of things and rearragne his own destiny based on the situations facing him today ... without little apparent regard for God's intended circumstances and the outworking of His eternal destiny for each of His creations. "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!  Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it,  "He did not make me"?  Can the pot say to the potter, "He knows nothing (has no understanding)"? (Isa. 29:16).    When the creation (conception) of one human being is for the perperuity of another or to sustain life beyond its endpoint, then man now assumes the role of divine intervenor ...  and must deny that Christ is the Alpha & Omega ... all things were made by Him and for His good pleasure ... "In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men." (John 1:1-4)   The separation of 'congenital organ sharing twins' is really a totally different question and should not be confused with 'cell cloning' and 'organ harvesting'.                                                                                                                                                                                                Oxbows Ministries

<<< >>>

'Designer' Baby May   Save    His Sister: What's Next?

By Marian Jones

Lisa & Jack Nash genetically designed their son to save their daughter's life. This scenario has some genetics experts worried.

The Englewood, Colo., couple knew they had a good chance of curing their 6-year-old daughter Molly of a fatal genetic condition called fanconi anemia. It would require a transplant of blood from their second child's umbilical cord - but it could only be successful if the baby's blood matched Molly's.

But the Nashes also knew their second child would have a one-in-four chance of developing fanconi anemia as well. So they underwent in vitro fertilization, screened all embryos for the disease before implantation into Lisa's womb and had the embryos screened for a "match" to Molly's blood.

When Adam was born on Aug. 29, doctors saved the blood from his umbilical cord. Last week, they transplanted these cells into Molly's bloodstream. The treatment has an 85 to 90 percent chance of working, and Molly is doing fine, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

But this "savior baby," some genetics experts worry, is setting a dangerous precedent.

"This may be the first step on a slippery slope down to genetically engineered children," said Abbey Meyers, president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders. "If we allow this kind of designing of babies, are we going to get to the point where if the embryo has the Alzheimer's gene, we don't want it to be born?"

"There can be abuse or misuse of any scientific and technical part of medicine, admitted Dr. Robert Stillman, medical director of Shady Grove Fertility Centers in Washington, D.C. "I do think it is a potential slippery slope."

But Stillman also noted that the ability to cure disease through prenatal screening is a big advance, and that most doctors would not make the leap from a disease-curing genetic intervention to one that is merely cosmetic.

"If someone wants a child who is tall or blond, it's up to [the doctor] to say that's not an appropriate use of the technology."

Not the First Designer Baby

Adam Nash may be the first child designed to treat a sibling, but he is hardly the first to be born through genetic selection. Genetic diagnosis (the practice of weeding out embryos with genetic conditions before implantation in the womb) "has been a clinical reality for perhaps 10 years," Stillman said.

It has been used when parents know they carry the gene for a serious disease and want to make sure they do not pass it on to their children. Doctors screen embryos for Huntington's disease, hemophilia, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and a host of other conditions before implantation in the mother's uterus.

"It's increasingly safer, increasingly easier to accomplish, and an increasing number of disorders can be screened," Stillman said.

But it is also expensive, costing between $3,000 to $5,000 on top of the $10-15,000 for an in vitro fertilization, and it is not covered by insurance. Critics say that only wealthy couples can afford the process, and this raises the possibility that, in the future, genetic diseases may become afflictions of the "have nots."

On top of the financial issue, the practice of selecting embryos crosses into thorny ethical territory.

"We've got people screaming and yelling about abortion,"  said Meyers. "Here we've gone a step beyond it and are saying that out of 100 embryos, I am going to throw away 99 of them because I don't like their genes."

In cases like the Nashes, though, the alternatives are equally problematic. They knew that, if they conceived naturally, their child would have a one-in-four chance of developing fanconi anemia.

At 23 weeks of gestation (the first point at which the disorder becomes apparent)  they could have chosen to have the fetus tested. At this point, some couples choose to abort if they find out the fetus has the genetic disorder, while others go on to have the child, knowing it may die in early childhood.

Right now, the decisions on whether to undergo these procedures fall with parents, their doctors and genetic counselors, with sketchy guidance from larger scientific and medical bodies.

But as reproductive technology to screen for genetic disorders becomes increasingly available, medical organizations will have to work to figure out where the ethical buck stops, Stillman said.

"Within the good there's always the opportunity to act in an unethical fashion,"  he said.  "It remains within each medical practice to define where the [proper] role of improving life through genetics fits."

Scientists have plans to clone humans

Los Angeles Times Sunday, January 28, 2001

WASHINGTON -- A famous Italian fertility specialist and his U.S. colleague have announced plans to clone human beings, making them the first scientists with expertise in human reproduction to publicly set such a goal.

Experts on Saturday said the pair may well succeed in their plans, but predicted it will cause great damage and would likely produce stillborn and diseased children. Cloning humans could also provoke lawmakers to seek bans on a broad range of medical research, such as work that uses human embryos to try to cure disease.

The two scientists stressed that their cloning procedure would be offered only to couples who cannot bear children by other means.

"We are serious people and have a track record to show for it," said Panayiotis Zavos, professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Kentucky, who announced his plans Thursday at a news conference in Lexington, Ky.

"Cloning has already been developed in animals. The genie is out of the bottle. It's a matter of time when humans will apply it to themselves, and we think this is best initiated by us . . . with ethical guidelines and quality standards," Zavos said.

Zavos said he is working with Italian fertility researcher Dr. Severino Antinori, who is well-known for helping post-menopausal women become pregnant.

Zavos said Saturday that they have lined up 10 infertile patients who want to be cloned and 10 other researchers who want to help. He said the work would be done in an undisclosed foreign country and he refused to disclose names of patients or researchers.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws