GUANGZHOU/BEIJING - The nation's first "designer"
test-tube babies, who will help their seriously ill sisters with stem cell
transplants, have been born amid ethical concerns in the medical profession and
among the public over the procedure.
A 38-year-old woman, identified
only as Ma from Conghua, Guangdong province, gave birth on June 29 to a healthy
baby girl conceived by in-vitro fertilization, according to an announcement
from the First Affiliated Hospital at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.
"I'm excited about the birth
of Boxi (the baby's name)," said Ma, whose 14-year-old daughter has
beta-thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder. "It's worth all the time,
money and pain to save my daughter."
An earlier birth in March by a
35-year-old woman, surnamed Gan from Zhanjiang, also in Guangdong province,
provided hope for her daughter, 6, who also suffers from beta-thalassemia.
Conception was achieved with the
aid of the hospital and the babies became the country's first "designer
babies" with the matched antigen to boost the production of human
leukocyte, white blood cells.
According to Zhou Canquan,
director of the hospital's obstetrics and gynecology department, umbilical cord
blood stem cell transplants and, if needed, bone marrow transplants, are the
only radical cure for the disease affecting Ma and Gan's daughters.
An online survey by China Daily
and Sohu, a website, found that nearly 49 per cent of 754 respondents opposed
the procedure, citing as their main reason that the baby was
"tailor-made" as a cure, and they believed this to be unethical.
Another major reason given was
that the success of the transplant was not guaranteed and the "designer
baby" had no say in the matter.
Ma, however, said that she
believed that the baby would be happy to save her sister's life, adding that
she is now eager to see her daughter undergo the transplant.
"I know that no surgery is
100 per cent safe and sure of success," Ma said. "But I must try to
cure my daughter who needs regular blood transfusions."
Ma resorted to IVF at Zhou's
hospital in 2010 after three failed attempts to naturally conceive a baby free
of genetic blood disorders. She and her husband were told they are both
carriers of the virulence gene.
Doctors checked the genes of
several embryos created through IVF.
They then filtered out those
passing on the parents' genetic disease, and chose the ones whose antigens
matched those of the sick sister.
Next, the selected embryos were
placed into the mother's womb. Immediately after birth the umbilical cord blood
was collected and saved for future stem cell transplantation.
"Conducting this type of
antigen typing enables couples carrying the beta-thalassemia virulence gene to
have a baby. Not only a healthy baby but one also able to save the life of
their other child," Zhou said. Therefore, "experts around the world
tend to call such test-tube babies 'therapeutic'".
Professor Wang Lina at Peking
University Third Hospital's centre of reproductive medicine, however, pointed
out that the procedure was controversial, especially because there was a lack
of legislation covering it and it could be abused.
"Our hospital will not carry
it out at least until health authorities issue the relative rules and
regulations," she said.
Qiu Renzong, a leading
bioethicist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had a different
opinion."This is just a regular clinical practice and does no harm to
anyone. So why not support it. It can help save lives," he said.
The service is only offered to
particular parents, Zhou said.
"We offer the
pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) service, including human leukocyte
antigen typing, only to parents of a child who needs stem cell or bone marrow
transplants and they should be legally allowed to have a second baby."
Ma got permission in 2008 from
family planning authorities to have a second child.
The ethics committee of the
hospital can supervise and veto the procedure to prevent possible abuse, Zhou
said.
However, he conceded that risks,
including possible side effects to the mother during the process and potential
health problems for the test-tube baby, did exist.
The process of including human
leukocyte antigen typing was first applied in 2001.
While in China the main ethical
controversy about PGD is the risk of being misused to select a baby's sex, the
main ethical controversy overseas is that it is unfair to those unselected
embryos.
"Some think that we are
changing an embryo's genes to make it fit in a design. However, we are not
designing but just selecting an embryo that is healthy and also able to cure a
person in need," Zhou explained.
There is a very slim chance,
about 1.7 out of 100,000, of someone finding suitable stem cells for human
leukocyte antigen from an unrelated person, experts said.
"And it is a long and
tortuous process for the mother. She has to go through all kinds of body
checks, take drugs and injections to get a qualified embryo," said Ma, who
waited for three months to conceive the baby and failed two times before to get
the suitable embryo.
Unlike Ma, Gan in Zhanjiang said
she would try to hide from both her daughters the fact that her second daughter
was a test-tube baby and gave stem cells to her sister.
"I will treat both of them
equally well. I won't tell them when they grow up," she said.
Xu Jingxi and Shan Juan
China Daily/Asia News Network
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