Le Figaro: The First "Drug Baby" Umut Talha - An Ethical Challenge

It's a boy, and one imagines his parents doubly happy. The small-Umut Talha, born January 26 Antoine Beclere hospital in Clamart, is not only an infant in "good health", weighing 3.650 kg at birth. His arrival in the world should also help heal her older sister suffering from a serious illness, officials said professors René Frydman and Arnold Munnich.
As the bioethics law authorizes in France since 2004, parents of Umut-Talha ("our hope" in Turkish), whose two previous children are suffering from a blood disease, beta-thalassemia, have decided design a "drug baby" or "double hope baby." For this, they have resorted to IVF , with a dual diagnosis for preimplantation embryo retain a healthy, genetically compatible with their sick children.

Precious umbilical cord

The doctors were able to ensure that the unborn child would not have the same disease as his elders and would be a match with one of the children in care. At birth, the umbilical cord connecting Umut-Talha to his mother, rich in stem cells, was collected. These stem cells that give rise to blood cells, will be retained for a subsequent transplant to his sister.
This practice, first in France, is very rare in the world. The United States have been using a decade. It is subject in France to the agreement of the agency of biomedicine , which issues licenses on a case by case basis. According to Professor Rene Frydman, already designed the first French test-tube baby in 1982, the hospital in Clamart has a dozen couples in this therapeutic approach. Projects "that could result in the next two years," he told Le Parisien.

A process challenged

Although hailed at the technical level, the birth of this "baby" raises ethical questions in the medical, political and religious. Party president Christian Democrat Christine Boutin denounced on Tuesday a "instrumentalization of the person conceived simply as a service to be used." In the same idea, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, president of the Conference of Bishops of France, said he was "strongly opposed" to this technique because it means that "they will use someone other than service someone else. "
Professor Frydman nevertheless challenges the utilitarian aspect that suggests the term "designer baby". Interviewed by RTL , he explained that parents of Umut-Thalat had primarily wanted to enlarge their family, and he could prove it. "[After in vitro fertilization], we had two embryos, one compatible and one not. What to do? The couple then asked what the two embryos are transferred because they wanted was another child. " As luck would only compatible embryo develops in the womb.
Geneticist Axel Khan, former member of the National Consultative Ethics Committee, for his part reiterated on Europe 1 that having a new child in the hope of saving his eldest patient was not new. "Before we make a prenatal diagnosis, parents were a child without sorting of embryos, hoping that chance in their favor. So he does here is not much change compared to what was the relatively frequent use of parents in this situation. "

Via Le Figaro: Le Premier "Bebe Medicament" Francais Est Ne