Making a baby from three parents

This week, a British medical panel gave the green light for further research on a technique using genetic information from three parents.  The panel said that there was no evidence so far that the technique is dangerous.

The method would be used during IVF to help couples when the baby is at risk for mitochondrial diseases (resulting from faulty DNA in the mitochondria, which lives outside the nucleus and is passed down by mom). Here’s how the three-parent technique would work:

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How attached are you to your eggs? Payment for a sperm donation runs about $100, but then, donation is quick and easy, relatively speaking. Some banks pay more if you are willing to donate openly, or for donors with graduate degrees. Egg “harvesting” requires a series of hormone injections and surgery under a local anesthetic, and it pays far more as a result: a study of ads aimed at potential egg donors reported in the New York Times found that ads at some colleges promise up to $50,000 (although ethical guidelines set by the American Society for Reproductive  Medicine recommend that compensation not exceed $10,000).

Eggs cost more than sperm. They’re harder, just from a purely physical standpoint, to give up. But critics of egg donation argue that it’s emotionally fraught, and that young women considering egg donation may regret the experience–a proposition you rarely hear about sperm donation, in spite of reports that a single donor in California, for example, may have fathered literally hundreds of children (even the most prolific egg donor could scarcely manage more than a dozen in a lifetime). If an egg and a sperm each provide 1/2 of the D.N.A. that combines to result in a child, why would the donation of the egg mean so much more?

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A London IVF clinic is partnering with a Virginia clinic in a unique raffle with a one-of-a-kind prize, reports the Daily Mail:  a human egg.

My neighbor won a Harley in a raffle last year, but a human egg?

At least one doctor says it’s common practice in American clinics, where guests who attend seminars on infertility and IVF can enter to win free treatment.  But the idea has Brits up in arms over commercializing human life.

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Mention the words “buying” or “building” a baby to anyone in the adoption or infertility communities and you are guaranteed to raise a few hackles. So I’m sure this story in yesterday’s New York Times is setting off quite the firestorm.

It’s a look into several different surrogacy arrangements gone bad, but the main part of the story centers around two couples from Michigan, the Kehoes of Grand Rapids and Laschell Baker of Ypislanti. Baker acted as a surrogate for the Kehoes, and then decided she was taking back the twins she bore when she discovered that Amy Kehoe had a mental illness. She and her husband already have four children. Continue reading »

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Here’s something that throws that whole “I want to donate my body to science” saying out the window. New York State has said OK to paying women for their eggs . . . at least when they’ll be used for research.

It’s got bioethicists in a tizzy, and I’m still weighing out how I feel about it myself. On the one hand, women are paid for their eggs when it’s an “egg donation” so another person (be it a gay man or another woman) can make a baby. And it takes “work,” to donate eggs . . . regardless of who is getting them in the end, women have to take fertility drugs for a period of time plus daily hormone injections and actually go through the harvesting procedure (including going under anesthesia, which not everyone is comfortable with).

Just check out what it takes to do the Lupron injection: Continue reading »

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