First IVF baby born after new technique to eliminate genetic disease

by Rachel Brown, April 13, 2015 – bionews.org

The first baby in Europe has been born following a new IVF-based technique developed to prevent the inheritance of genetic disease.

The screening technique, called karyomapping, is a type of PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) procedure. Current PGD methods are developed on a case-by-case basis to test embryos for the presence of a specific mutation found in one or both of the parents’ DNA and can involve months of laboratory work.

Karyomapping, on the other hand, can test for the same diseases, but can be completed much faster and is no more expensive than traditional PGD methods. It can also be used to check that embryos have the correct number of chromosomes.

Mrs Carmen Meagu suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a group of rare disorders of the peripheral nervous system that cause muscle degeneration and sensation loss in the feet and hands. She inherited the disease from her father, and had a 50 percent chance of passing it on to her children.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Mrs Meagu said: ‘For me the risk was too high. I was told I could try and get pregnant and have a test at 16 weeks, but that really wasn’t an option for me because it would have been too hard to have an abortion at that stage.

‘Then we were told about a clinic in London which could screen the disease out, and we felt we had to try’.

The technique involves using DNA from Mrs Meagu, her husband Gabriel, and another family member, to compare roughly 300,000 different points across the genome called SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). This allows scientists to find characteristic features that are unique to the chromosome carrying the defective gene. Following a standard IVF cycle, embryos are biopsied to find out which ones are free of the genetic disease.

Mr Paul Serhal is the founder and medical director of the Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health, where the technique was used in December 2013. Also speaking to The Telegraph, he explained: ‘Essentially, karyomapping finds a fingerprint that is unique to the chromosome that carries the defective gene.

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Obama to Call for End to ‘Conversion’ Therapies for Gay and Transgender Youth

New York Times by Michael D. Shears, April 8, 2015

WASHINGTON — A 17-year-old transgender youth, Leelah Alcorn, stunned her friends and a vast Internet audience in December when she threw herself in front of a tractor-trailer after writing in an online suicide note that religious therapists had tried to convert her back to being a boy.

In response, President Obama is calling for an end to such therapies aimed at “repairing” gay, lesbian and transgender youth. His decision on the issue is the latest example of his continuing embrace of gay rights.

In a statement that was posted on Wednesday evening alongside a WhiteHouse.gov petition begun in honor of Ms. Alcorn, Mr. Obama condemned the practice, sometimes called “conversion” or “reparative” therapy, which is supported by some socially conservative organizations and religious doctors.

The petition has received more than 120,000 signatures in three months.

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Bill would require fertility benefits for lesbians

The Baltimore Sun, by Michael Dresser, March 18, 2015

f Fiona M. Jardine had a husband, the expensive fertility treatments she’s now undergoing would be covered by her health plan.

But Jardine, 29, is married to a woman, so she and her wife have to pay out of pocket.

A bill that would grant married lesbian couples the same fertility treatment benefits as husbands and wives is advancing in the Maryland General Assembly. The measure passed unanimously in a House subcommittee Tuesday, and full Senate and House committees are likely to vote this week.

Del. Terri L. Hill, the bill’s House sponsor, said the measure is designed to bring consistency to state law, given Maryland voters’ approval of same-sex marriage in 2012.

“We’re concerned that we correct the law to reflect Maryland’s state on marriage equality,” said Hill, a Democrat who represents Howard and Baltimore counties. “It was about making sure all Marylanders are treated in an equitable fashion.”

Maryland has required state-regulated health insurance plans that offer pregnancy-related benefits to cover the costs of in vitro fertilization since 2000. It is one of a dozen states that require coverage of the procedure, which involves fertilizing the egg outside the woman’s body and implanting the embryo in the uterus.

That law includes a requirement that only the husband’s sperm can be used in any covered in vitro procedure — a provision that excludes lesbians using donated sperm. Hill’s bill, sponsored in the Senate by Montgomery County Democrat Cheryl Kagan, would remove that requirement for same-sex couples.

And if an insurer chooses to provide more extensive fertility coverage to heterosexual couples, same-sex couples would have to be offered the same.

“It’s all about equality. It’s all about updating our laws,” Kagan said.

Jardine, a graduate assistant at the University of Maryland College Park, said she was dismayed to learn that her insurance carrier would not cover the costly form of artificial insemination she needs because of a medical condition. The sticking point was that she and her wife, Jo Arnone, 57, would be using donor sperm instead of a husband’s sperm.

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Kids thrive just as well in non-traditional families, new book says

MyKwartha.com, March 20, 2015 – By Andrea Gordon

Baby Jasmine Chan delivered the ultimate Valentine’s Day gift to her parents this year. It was her first word, clear and deliberate.

“Daddy,” she said, beaming across the dinner table.

Music to her two dads’ ears.

When they met 12 years ago, Paul Chan and Ewan French never imagined they would one day answer to Daddy or Papa.

Chan had recently come out to his family. It was a tough period and his mother was heartbroken. She wanted grandkids. He assumed his own dream of being a father would never come true.

It wasn’t until they married two years ago that the couple started to explore the idea of parenthood. Chan, 33, was confident they could be good, loving parents. French was on the fence.

“I always knew we’d have a strong community around us,” says French, 34, who was born and raised in Scotland.

“But I didn’t want (our child) to face any challenges because of having same-sex parents. Would we be putting her at an unfair advantage because of it?”

According to a new book from University of Cambridge developmental psychologist Susan Golombok, the answer is a resounding “No.”

Golombok, director of the university’s Centre for Family Research, has been studying the impact of evolving family structures on children for almost 40 years.

Modern Families: Parents and Children in New Family Forms, which rounds up research from around the world, concludes that children raised by same-sex parents and solo moms by choice or born as a result of donor conception or surrogacy fare just as well as kids raised by a two-parent, heterosexual married couple.

“The main conclusion is that what matters for children is not so much the structure of the family — the gender or sexual orientation of their parents, the number of parents or whether parents are biologically related to their children,” Golombok said in a phone interview from England.

“What seems to be more important is the quality of the relationships within the family.”

In other words, while the traditional model of mom, dad and biological kids was once considered “the gold standard,” four decades of research doesn’t bear that out.

All other things being equal, children manage just as well — and face the same difficulties — whether they have two dads and no mom, or two moms and no father as they do with two heterosexual parents. There is no evidence they have more psychological problems, difficulty adjusting or atypical gender development, Golombok found.

The fluidity of partnerships and family is also the subject of a soon-to-be-released book by Hollywood actress Maria Bello.

Her memoir, Whatever…Love is Love, follows her 2013 Modern Love column in the Sunday New York Times, which drew accolades. Titled “Coming Out as a Modern Family,” it told the poignant story of how Bello explained to her 12-year-old son that she was in love with her best friend, a woman.

The piece, which made the list of the top 10 Modern Love columns ever written, highlights the resilience and adaptability that kids can demonstrate when they have trusting relationships with parents.

It’s something Chantal Saville has seen in her 6-year-old daughter Nikki, who she’s now raising with the help of her own mom.

After Saville’s marriage broke up two years ago and the couple sold the business they ran outside Peterborough, she wondered how she’d make ends meet.

Her mother, widowed a decade earlier, was still living in the Toronto bungalow Saville grew up in as an only child. The two had always been close.

“Now we are effectively co-parenting Nikki,” says Saville, 42, a writer.

In the early days, mom and grandma occasionally locked horns over discipline when the era of, “because I said so” clashed with modern refrain of, “sweetie, here’s why I need you to do what I ask.”

But they’ve learned that communication is key and that whoever is in charge at a given moment gets the final word.

Organizations like American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association have already endorsed findings that the sexual orientation of parents has no bearing on child-rearing abilities or the well-being of kids.

What’s new about Modern Families is it brings together empirical research involving many thousands of families from around the world and explores some of the reasons that more unorthodox families seem to do so well.

Golombok’s career has spanned an evolution in family life, starting in the late 1970s as lesbian moms came out and divorced husbands fought for the right to raise their children, followed by the arrival of the first test-tube baby in 1978.

The book comes amid a huge shift in how society recognizes and accommodates the assortment of families created as a result of assisted reproductive technologies. Modern kids may have a “solo mom” who chose to have a child on her own using donated sperm, or relationships with as many as five parents, including two legal parents, a sperm donor, egg donor and a surrogate.

The careful planning and lengths these parents go to in order to have children may be one reason their kids do well, says Golombok.

It can require years of fertility treatment and facing other barriers like social disapproval. The less motivated give up along the way.

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IVF test improves chances of implantation by pinpointing fertility window

March 10, 2015 – the guardian.com

Thousands of infertile couples could benefit from a new test that tailors the timing of IVF treatment to a woman’s individual cycle for the first time.

The scientists behind the technique believe that IVF frequently fails because the embryo is transferred at the wrong time, missing a crucial fertility window.

The new test assesses the activity of genes of the womb lining to pinpoint a woman’s optimum time for treatment and in pilot studies the personalised approach appeared to significantly boost success rates.

Prof Juan Garcia-Velasco, of the IVI fertility clinic in Madrid, said: “We think that about 15% of cases of implantation failure are simply due to bad timing.” Prof Garcia-Velasco is now leading a clinical trial of the test, involving 2,500 patients in more than ten countries, including Britain.

Geeta Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility whose London clinic is participating, said: “The weakest link in IVF is implantation failure. I believe this is a breakthrough.”

There are more than 60,000 IVF cycles in Britain each year, but just 24% of these treatments lead to live births. Clinics currently check the visual appearance of the womb lining using ultrasound, giving a general indication of health.

“What we have never known is the right window of implantation,” said Nargund. “If you miss that window, no matter how beautiful the embryo, it’s not going to implant.”

For most women there is a two to four day stretch when the lining, or endometrium, sends out crucial chemical signals that allow the embryo to attach. For some women the fertile window is shifted earlier or later in the cycle or is unusually brief, however.

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Gay Couples One Step Closer to Having Their Own Babies After Stem Cell Breakthrough

by Dominic Preston, FrontiersMedia.com, February 25, 2015

A major breakthrough in stem cell research at the University of Cambridge and Israel’s Wiezmann Institute of Science has opened the door to the possibility of same-sex couples being able to have children together in the future.

The researchers used stem cells from embryos and skin cells from adults to create new, viable stem cells, using a technique that has previously been used to create live baby mice. Azim Surani, Wellcome Trust project leader and professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge, explained that this represented a significant milestone:

“We have succeeded in the first and most important step of this process, which is to show we can make these very early human stem cells in a dish.”

Perhaps most excitingly, the researchers admitted that it was possible to create stem cells from donors of the same gender, and that egg and sperm cells could also be created in the future. Jacob Hanna, the lead on the Israeli research team, explained that members of the gay community have already reached out to the researchers:

“It has already caused interest from gay groups because of the possibility of making egg and sperm cells from parents of the same sex.”

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U.K. Parliament approves controversial three-parent mitochondrial gene therapy

ScienceMag.org By Gretchen Vogel Erik Stokstad – February 3, 2015

The United Kingdom’s House of Commons voted overwhelmingly today to allow British researchers to pursue a new fertility treatment that could prevent certain kinds of genetic diseases. The technique, called mitochondrial DNA replacement therapy, could allow women who carry disease-causing mutations in their mitochondrial genes to give birth to genetically related children free of mitochondrial disease.

The measure, which passed 382 to 128, has been controversial, especially because it would alter the DNA of an embryo in a way that could be passed on to future generations. Some scientists and nongovernmental organizations have argued that not enough is known about possible side effects of the technique to go forward in human patients. “We believe the House of Commons has made a serious mistake, which we hope does not have dire consequences,” said Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, California, in a statement.

Proponents of the measure quickly began to celebrate. “I am delighted that [members of Parliament] have voted to allow the introduction of mitochondrial transfer techniques into the clinic,” said John Tooke, president of the Academy of Medical Sciences in London, in a statement. Robert Meadowcroft, head of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign in London, added: “We have finally reached a milestone in giving women an invaluable choice, the choice to become a mother without fear of passing on a lifetime under the shadow of mitochondrial disease to their child.”

Mitochondria are the energy-producing engines of a cell. These organelles contain their own set of genes, called mtDNA. When mitochondria don’t work properly, a variety of symptoms can result, which can make mitochondrial diseases difficult to recognize and diagnose. Some babies born with defective mitochondria die within months. Other people don’t show any symptoms until much later in life.

Researchers have developed ways to transfer the genetic material from an egg cell that carries faulty mitochondria into a donor egg that has healthy mitochondria. The resulting embryo carries nuclear DNA from the mother and father and mitochondrial DNA from the egg donor.

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How mitochondrial donation involved in three parent babies works

TheTelegraph.co.uk – by The Agency, February 3, 2015

MPs will tomorrow decide whether mitochondrial donation allowing IVF babies to be born with DNA from three different people should be made legal.

The technique involves replacing DNA in an egg in order to prevent devastating inherited mitochondrial diseases.

What are mitochondria?

Mitochondria are tiny rod-like structures in cells which act as power houses, generating the energy that allows our bodies to function. Unusually, they have their own DNA, distinct from the genetic material within the cell nucleus. Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) makes up about 0.1% of a cell’s total DNA and does not affect individual characteristics such as appearance and personality.

What causes mitochondria disease?

Harmful mutations in mitochondrial DNA can prevent the mitochondria working properly, resulting in a number of diseases some of which can be serious and life threatening. They may affect major organs and cause conditions ranging from poor vision to diabetes and muscle wasting.

How are mitochondria diseases passed on?

Children may inherit mitochondrial DNA defects from their mothers, but not their fathers. People with faulty mDNA can develop symptoms or be carriers of the condition without experiencing ill-effects themselves.

What is mitochondria donation?

Defective mDNA from a mother’s egg can be replaced with healthy mDNA from a donor. This will then prevent the harmful mutations being inherited and passed onto future generations.

What are the techniques involved?

There are two different procedures, one carried out before fertilisation and the other after.

Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST) involves first removing the nuclear DNA from a donor egg whose mitochondria are healthy. The “spindle” of chromosomes containing the mother’s nuclear DNA is then taken from her egg and inserted into the donor egg. As a result, the donor egg is left with nuclear DNA from the mother and mDNA from the donor. This healthy egg is then fertilised and implanted into the mother’s womb.

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Largest-ever study of same-sex couples’ kids finds they’re better off than other children

Vox.com by German Lopez, July 7, 2014

The largest-ever study of same-sex parents found their children turn out healthier and happier than the general population.

A new study of 315 same-sex parents and 500 children in Australia found that, after correcting for socioeconomic factors, their children fared well on several measures, including asthma, dental care, behavioral issues, learning, sleep, and speech.

At the same time, two-thirds of the parents reported a perceived stigma on at least one issue tracked by the survey. These stigmas ranged from other people gossiping about an LGBT family to same-sex parents feeling excluded at social gatherings due to their sexual orientation.

Perceived stigmas were associated with worse scores for physical activity, mental health, family cohesion, and emotional outcomes. The stigmas, however, were not prevalent enough to negatively tilt the children’s outcomes in a comparison to outcomes across the general population.

Study author Simon Crouch told ABC News in Australia that previous research suggests same-sex parents don’t feel pressured into gendered roles, which lets them more freely adapt to the needs of the family.

“So what this means is that people take on roles that are suited to their skill sets rather than falling into those gender stereotypes, which is mum staying home and looking after the kids and dad going out to earn money,” Crouch said. “What this leads to is a more harmonious family unit and therefore feeding on to better health and well-being.”

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Positively Dads – These HIV-positive gay men fathered children. Here’s how you can too

By E.J.Graff via Gays With Kids

Aslan always believed he would be a father—if not with a partner, then by teaming up with one of his straight, single female friends. But “at the age of 36, I became infected with the [HIV] virus,” he said. “I thought my whole world collapsed. Everything crashed with that. I believed that there would be no child.” He was gay and single, living in a cosmopolitan city in his southern European country, when a female friend asked him to pair up to make a baby. He had heard that it could be done safely, but when he told her his HIV status, her reaction, he said somewhat morosely, was “very naturally, not very brave.” Unwilling to face that rejection again, he spent years trying to bury his profound desire to parent.

Things were different for Brian Rosenberg and Ferd van Gameren, who were already in their forties by the time they began thinking about having kids. Their early years together focused on keeping Brian, who is HIV-positive, healthy and Ferd negative. But once protease inhibitors emerged and Brian’s health was stable, the couple decided to focus on enjoying life. They moved from Boston into a one-bedroom Chelsea co-op in New York City, started summering in Fire Island, and hopped around their friends’ parties having “a gay old time,” as Brian put it.

After several years, though, all that began to pale. “We started thinking that life had to be more meaningful for us than the next party, the next fabulous vacation.” They wanted a family, and all the responsibility, love, and exhaustion that went with it. They tried adoption first, but when one birthmother backed away, their hearts were broken–so they discussed surrogacy. Given his HIV status, Brian assumed that Ferd would be the biological dad–but Ferd wanted to raise Brian’s bio children. And so in 2009 Ferd went online and found the Special Program for Assisted Reproduction, or SPAR, dedicated to helping HIV-positive men father children safely. The program is run by the Bedford Research Foundation and its director Dr. Ann Kiessling.

Back in southern Europe, by 2011, Aslan was learning about the same option. He was seven months into a new relationship that seemed as if it would stick—and despite himself, he began to imagine having a family with this man. Coincidentally, an American friend forwarded him an article about Circle Surrogacy, which worked with HIV-positive gay men in the States. “And it gave me, like, a wow, big hope, a new window to plan my life again!” Aslan quickly contacted Circle Surrogacy, which connected him with Dr. Ann Kiessling. “She was very kind and explained all the procedures, that it’s completely safe. And this was the start.”

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