NEWS ABOUT: embryo
embryo stories: 19 news briefs
Daily Telegraph (UK) Jun 14, 09 6:10 AM CDT
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A British fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryo into a woman who aborted it as soon as she found out, dashing another couple's hopes of having their second baby, reports the Telegraph. When a lab assistant informed the couple, they "held each other and sobbed," said the woman. “I remember thinking: ‘That’s our last hope gone—we will never have another child.’" A rash of recent mistakes has resulted in calls for more regulation of the fertility industry.
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Stem cell order will not tell Congress to allow creation of new lines
New York Times Mar 9, 09 4:33 AM CDT
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Barack Obama is set to lift the Bush administration's restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, but his announcement today won't cover all such experiments, the New York Times reports. The president's action will allow scientists to do research using existing stem cell lines, and those embryos left over from fertility clinics. But a congressional ban in effect since 1996 will still prevent federal researchers from creating and experimenting on their own stem cell lines.
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LA Doc offers defect-screening technique
to pick eye color
Daily Telegraph (UK) Mar 2, 09 1:39 AM CST
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The founders of an embryo technology that identifies birth defects are furious that a leading Los Angeles fertility clinic is using their discovery to enable couples to choose baby traits like hair and eye color. The role of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis—which identifies thousands of characteristics in a three-day embryo—was intended to help screen out debilitating conditions, not create $18,000 "designer babies," they tell the Telegraph .
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Grandmom: 'Obviously she overdid herself'
Los Angeles Times Jan 31, 09 10:32 AM CST
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The California mother of octuplets “is obsessed with children” and wanted “just one more girl” even though she already had six kids, her mother told the Los Angeles Times . The 33-year-old divorcee “is very good with children, but obviously she overdid herself,” said her mother, who filed for bankruptcy last year, claiming $1 million in debt from a bad housing investment.
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Scientists implanted in womb only cells without genes that could lead to disease
BBC Jan 9, 09 1:10 PM CST
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The UK’s first “cancer-free” baby was born yesterday, but not without a shower of criticism for the parents and doctors, the BBC reports. Doctors screened the embryo for the altered BRCA1 gene, whose carriers have an 80% chance of developing breast cancer. “The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter,” said a fertility expert.
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Study finds no negative effects compared with fresh
BBC Jul 9, 08 1:57 PM CDT
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When it comes to in vitro fertilization, frozen might be better than fresh, a new study shows. Infants born after being implanted in mothers' wombs as frozen embryos were no more likely than those from fresh stock to be born with congenital defects, the BBC reports; but they were also significantly heavier, and less likely to be born prematurely.
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Hybrids will be used for stem cell study
Daily Telegraph (UK) May 20, 08 3:40 AM CDT
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British legislators have voted to allow scientists to create hybrid human-animal embryos for stem cell research, the Daily Telegraph reports. The new laws will give British scientists more freedom to pursue hybrid research than those of any other country. The vote passed by a huge margin after supporters of the research argued that it could someday save millions of lives.
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Controversial cow-human creation lived for three days
Times (UK) Apr 2, 08 6:14 AM CDT
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In a brave new world breakthrough, British scientists for the first time have created animal-human hybrid embryos, the London Times reports. The nuclei of cow eggs were removed and replaced with ones from a human cell, creating "admixed" embryos—or "cybrids" whose genetic material is 99.9% human. Electricity jolted the cybrids to life and they survived for three days. The research team aims to create longer-living cybrids for use in stem cell research.
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Docs want to cut number of multiple births from fertility treatment
New York Times Feb 19, 08 12:01 PM CST
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Fertility doctors are beginning to wonder whether they're too successful. With in vitro fertilization prompting a 70% increase in the rate of multiple births since 1980, some are espousing a switch to single-embryo transfer. The procedure lowers the success rate but also lowers the rate of multiple births, with their attendant health risks, the New York Times reports.
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More women planning for kids should husbands die in combat
Guardian (UK) Feb 17, 08 7:35 PM CST
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More UK military wives are freezing their husbands' sperm before the men serve in the Middle East. One London fertility clinic expected interest from soldiers but was surprised by the "wives and girlfriends who want to have children should anything happen," a spokesman said. But servicemen must give consent before sperm storage, experts say, due to the high divorce rate among soldiers.
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Move could aid development of new stem-cell lines
San Diego Union-Tribune Jan 17, 08 4:38 PM CST
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A California lab has cloned a human embryo, a science first; the researchers stopped short, however, of creating stem cells. Using a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, the scientists fused DNA from a man’s skin cells with donated egg cells—and created an embryo with cells specific to the man. Scientists hope stem cells could replace damaged cells with reduced risk of rejection.
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Blastomere biopsy may finally overcome ethical obstacles
Wired Jan 10, 08 5:43 PM CST
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Scientists have created new embryonic stem cells while keeping the donor embryos intact, Wired reports, a breakthrough that could finally permit long-delayed research into curing cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Researchers plucked single cells from 2-day-old human embryos, coaxed them to become ESCs, and developed them into heart tissue, neurons, cartilage, and blood cells.
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Pols can't nix research and back in-vitro
clinics: Time writer
Time Dec 2, 07 9:02 AM CST
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Last week's breakthrough in stem-cell research—the creation of cells from skin rather than embryos—is a tremendous scientific advance, writes Michael Kinsley in Time magazine. But the new science doesn't let hypocritical GOP politicians dodge the controversy over embryonic stem cells: They will still be risking human lives with inconsistent objections, he writes.
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States asked to grant rights to fertilized eggs
Los Angeles Times Nov 23, 07 12:55 PM CST
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Tired of waiting for a more right-leaning court to revisit Roe v. Wade, opponents of abortion in several states are adopting a new strategy: constitutional amendments to grant human status to embryos. The LA Times reports on a grass-roots movement to put referendums on state ballots: It faces considerable obstacles but has pro-choice advocates nervous.
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Hybrids to be created for stem cell research
Guardian (UK) Sep 4, 07 4:19 AM CDT
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Controversial experiments with embryos that are part human, part animal will be approved by a British commission tomorrow, the Guardian reports. Researchers hope to create the hybrid embryos to extract stem cells for use in potential treatments of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and possibly motor neuron problems and spinal cord injuries.
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Eggs from girls as young as 5 can be frozen before chemotherapy
BBC Jul 2, 07 8:37 AM CDT
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Prepubescent girls with cancer do not have to give up the prospect of parenthood because of the effects of chemotherapy. Cancer patients as young as 5 can have their eggs removed and frozen before treatment, preserving their fertility, according to research by Israeli scientists. With childhood cancer survival rates climbing, that's good news for a growing number of patients.
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Technique sidesteps both ethical and technical difficulties
Nature Jun 6, 07 5:48 PM CDT
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Normal skin cells can be transformed into the equivalent of stem cells in mice, researchers report, and the new technique may revolutionize research on humans. Because it doesn't involve embryos or eggs, the process skirts the ethical quagmires surrounding human stem cell research; the easy availability of raw material and relative simplicity of the technique are logistical pluses.
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Guardian (UK) May 17, 07 2:31 PM CDT
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The British government has reversed its stance on the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos and will propose allowing scientists to use them as sources of stem cells. Scientists developing treatments for incurable diseases would be allowed to grow the hybrid embryos for no longer than two weeks, and implanting them into a human womb would not be permitted.
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Targeting breast cancer gene raises fears
of "designer babies"
Times (UK) Apr 26, 07 10:57 AM CDT
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The British government is poised to OK a procedure that screens embryos for genes that greatly increase the risk—but do not necessarily cause—breast cancer. Two couples with strong family histories of the disease are expected to pioneer the technique, already approved in principle, and crank up the debate over "designer babies."
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