# ‘Donor-free’ eggs herald a fertility breakthrough



## Anthony Reid (Jan 1, 2002)

I was reading this article on the train this morning, and it got me thinking - and I ended up with more questions than answers.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/04/donor-free-eggs-herald-a-fertility-breakthrough-3379685/

It starts of stating that the eggs are created from the tissue of the amniotic membrane - which is the sac that surrounds the baby during pregnancy.

Now unless we can clone amniotic membranes - is it not still an issue to recruit donors? Would people be willing to donate from their membranes knowing that they will be genetically manufactured(maybe the wrong phrase) to grow eggs? My guess and this is a pure guess - is that women would rather donate home grown eggs rather than let them be scientifically manufactured from the membrane. Surely its better that way, and less risky for any child born? Science isn't perfect after all - otherwise IVF would be a 100% success rate no matter what clinic you went to.

A bit controversial - but does this also place a price on amniotic membranes in extremely poor countries where women would sell them to willing clinics?

Moving on swiftly before that last sentence gets me into trouble, My other thought was "What does this mean for the child's identity?". The concept of 'telling the child' is a pretty hot topic around here - and I wonder what this would do for those that wanted to tell? Would the nature of this technology make you think differently about whether you would still tell the child about its origin?

This has the potential of becoming routine in a number of years time, and it is fantastic achievement - it certainly has the potential to help a lot of people. But I think there are a lot of questions and ethical issues that need to be answered before anything like this becomes regular practice.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

/links


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## mierran (Apr 24, 2009)

I think that there could be pros and cons.

On the plus side there would be no risk to the donor from undergoing the treatment - no possibility of ohss or infection etc post egg collection.

However would they be as aware of the implications of what they were doing? I suppose there would even be the risk of them being unaware their dna was even being used.

For me i know what my donor went through to give me the chance of my babies. I tell my children about her. I think in some ways receiving eggs from membranes would be easier as i would have less guilt over the risks she took for me. 
On the other hand it is less natural and i would be worried about eg dna stability and whether there was a limit on the number of eggs produced from a single membrane. Could you have hundreds of families receiving eggs from one donor.  Would they need to do that to make it cost effective? And would it be like i think in vitro maturation of eggs atm with lots of eggs needed to produce few viable embryos?

Would i still tell my children? Absolutely. I would have to think how to phrase it - prob something along the lines of ' a lady had a baby and she and the baby wanted to help mummy have a baby too so the doctors took some cells and mixed them with daddys cells and put them in mummys tummy ' or some such. But i'd still want them to know from very young. 

What i dont know is whether this would affect the way donor conceived children perceive themselves.

An interresting idea.


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## goldbunny (Mar 26, 2012)

would this lead to them being able to create eggs from a sac that was miscarried? thus perhaps being able to create extra eggs for someone with low egg reserve? so out of tragedy could at least rescue some hope? obviously too late for me, but maybe other 'older' women would benefit if that was ever possible. or would the fact it was a m/c mean that the sac would produce flawed eggs?


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## mierran (Apr 24, 2009)

I think if it was m/c due to a chromosomal problem the cells produced would potentially have that same problem. Also i dont know whether in early pregnancy there would be a large and developed enough sac to allow the process to occurr. My feeling is prob not an option - at least not at first. Later on - who knows.....


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## duckybun (Feb 14, 2012)

Would it be ethically right for the mother to decide to donate her sac as surely by the time the her egg had been fertilised and grown to a full term baby all the DNA contained in the sac would be the baby's, therefore she would be making a decision on the behalf of her child to donate its DNA to the creation of eggs? I don't know if the sac is baby's DNA or mothers so might be totally wrong on that count, but interesting dilemma if so.


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