Feb 25, 2008

Changing Our DNA

I have a daughter, Alicia, who I thought was perfectly healthy. Although through her father's condition, I knew there was a 50% risk she would inherit a disorder, she had got to nearly 5 years of age without any signs or symptoms. I thought we were home free, that I was her mother and I would notice if something wasn't right.

Then it happened overnight. One day she was dressing and I noticed her toes had curled over. What followed were specialist appointments, blood tests and then the agonizing truth. All my hopes and dreams for her future were shattered in an instant. I felt angry, cheated, thrown into a world of genetic disorder that I didn't want to belong to. She still has a future, and likely a bright one, but it just wasn't the one I imagined.

So I would give anything to give her a vitamin or a stem cell or some type of treatment that would stop this disease, even if it meant hacking bits out of my own body.

I can see the advantage of using DNA from three people in IVF, as a mother on the disease side of the fence, but I'm still not in favor of it.

Why? No one knows what side effects using three people's DNA would cause to the baby. Who would be the baby's mother? As there are genes from two women, would that mean the baby would have two mothers? How would a child feel, when everyone else has a mother and a father but he has three parents? It reminds me of Frankinstein's baby.

As a disabled person myself, I can really see a time when IVF phases out any imperfection, and one day maybe natural conception will be deemed too 'risky' in a climate of perfect, laboratory produced 'designer' babies.