News that a celebrity, in a single-sex relationship, used her brother's sperm to produce a 'son' with her partner (http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/mary-portas-reveals-brother-biological-5161268) raises a few potential concerns. I appreciate that asking a trusted family member to donate gametes might seem a good solution in such cases (and would make the offspring related to both partners-25%, like a nephew, in the case of the celebrity) but there would be an increased danger of inbreeding, leading to possible genetic disorders in the offspring (remember the incidence of haemophilia in the European royal families around the turn of the 19th Century), if the process ever involved fusing the brother and sister's gametes (which might happen in inappropriate cases, unsupported by professional medical advice). Our ability to detect (and, in some cases, correct) genetic problems is improving but I think an enthusiasm for such arrangements (influenced by celebrity?) certainly stands a chance of resulting in some unintended consequences. The surprising things to me were a) that the potential genetic problems of brother-sister derived embryos were unmentioned in some of the media accounts and b) that information on the incidence of people choosing to go down this route are not collected.
No comments:
Post a Comment