Posted on 10/21/2018 12:25:49 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
NEW YORK — When future historians look back on the 21st century, one of the most iconic photos may be of a smiling, dark-haired man in blue scrubs protectively holding a newborn — the world’s first commercially produced “three-parent” baby.
This is John Zhang, the Chinese-born, British-educated founder and medical director of a Manhattan fertility center that is blowing up the way humans reproduce.
In 2009, Zhang helped a 49-year-old patient become the world’s oldest known woman to carry her own child. In the not-too-distant future, he says, 60-year-old women will be able to do the same.
In 2015, Zhang stunned his scientific peers by transferring a genetically “abnormal” embryo to the womb of a woman who had run out of other options. Abnormal embryos — which appear to have the wrong number of chromosomes — are almost universally considered nonviable and discarded by other fertility doctors. The woman gave birth to a healthy baby girl, prompting clinics around the world to reevaluate their policies.
But it was the three-parent baby that really put Zhang on the map. Working with a Jordanian couple who had lost six babies — two in infancy, four in miscarriages — to Leigh syndrome, a heritable neurological disorder, Zhang put to practical use a procedure that others had dared to try only on animals.
He extracted the woman’s nuclear DNA, which carries the biological material responsible for such things as physical appearance and other major traits, but not the ones that lead to Leigh disease. Then he inserted the DNA into a healthy donor egg and fertilized it with sperm from the woman’s husband. The child, a boy born in 2016, appears to be free from the disease.
“If there is a gene which causes a problem, it would be washed out through natural evolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He extracted the woman’s nuclear DNA, which carries the biological material responsible for such things as physical appearance and other major traits, but not the ones that lead to Leigh disease. Then he inserted the DNA into a healthy donor egg and fertilized it with sperm from the woman’s husband. The child, a boy born in 2016, appears to be free from the disease.
...
It seems like this is curing disease at conception.
[It seems like this is curing disease at conception.]
“...Manhattan fertility center that is blowing up the way humans reproduce.”
Blowing up?
These writers are idiots.
My guess is the claims made here are false.
[My guess is the claims made here are false.]
Pish-tosh. Lots of women (compared to the total population of women) naturally give birth to their own children in their 50s. The oldest verified was 57, iirc. Perhaps this means the oldest "patient" to carry her own artificially-conceived child.
too bad for them an 80 (?) year old lady already beat them too it -had a baby named Isaac.
Also Elizabeth was thought to be beyond child bearing years and had John.
Science is so far behind the Truth of history.
Sarah was 90. Elizabeth was probably 40-ish because Zechariah could serve as a priest only until he was 50, and his wife would almost certainly have been several years younger than he.
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