Tag Archives: World’s First

World’s First Sperm Bank App Lets You Order A Donor

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London Sperm Bank Donors has just launched a mobile app that allows would-be parents to search for the sperm donor of their dreams on-the-go, with filters for medical history, looks, occupation, highest educational degree, height, nationality, religion, and race. Each profile even has a lovingly written description of the donor’s personality — it’s like a dating app, but with fewer photos, to ensure anonymity (pen sketches of some donors are available), more information, and a guarantee that the profiles are actually accurate: Since every donor has been vetted within an inch of their life, no one gets to add fake inches to their height, unlike your last Tinder date. You can also create a “wish-list” of ideal donor characteristics and get notifications on your phone when a donor who matches them joins the registry. Sperm-shopping has never been so convenient.

Of course, doomsayers are already heralding the app, which London Sperm Bank Donors says is the first of its kind in the world, as the end of society as we know it. “How much further can we go in the trivialization of parenthood?” Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of pro-life organization Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told British newspaper The Times. “This is the ultimate denigration of fatherhood.” It’s not as if people weren’t already selecting their own sperm donors, though. They just couldn’t do it on their phones, but now, people can search for a baby daddy as easily as they order Thai, and I’m so into it. If I’m looking for a Dutch atheist with a PhD in neuroscience to provide half of my future child’s genome, I can find him within seconds. I’d still have to come up with the £950 or $1,221 required to have his sperm delivered to my local fertility clinic, but since window-shopping is free, here are three donors whose sperm I would happily introduce to my eggs.

Read More: cosmopolitan

World’s First Baby Born From Controversial Three-parent Technique

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The world’s first baby has been born using a controversial new technique by US scientists to include DNA from three parents in the embryo, said a report Tuesday.

The baby boy was born five months ago in Mexico to Jordanian parents, and is healthy and doing well, said the report in New Scientist magazine, described as an “exclusive.”

The boy’s mother carried genes for a disorder known as Leigh Syndrome, a fatal nervous system disorder which she had passed on to her two previous children who both died of the disease.

She had also suffered four miscarriages.

The woman, whose identity was withheld by New Scientist, and her husband sought the help of John Zhang, a doctor from the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City to have a baby that would be genetically related to them but would not carry the inherited disease.

The United States has not approved any three-parent method for fertility purposes, so Zhang went to Mexico where he was quoted by New Scientist as saying “there are no rules.”

One method that has been approved in the United Kingdom, called pronuclear transfer, was deemed unacceptable to the couple because it would involve the destruction of two embryos, said the report.

Since the mother carried the genes for the disease in her mitochondria, or DNA that is passed down from the maternal side, Zhang used her nuclear DNA and combined it with mitochondria from an egg donor, in a technique known as spindle nuclear transfer.

“He removed the nucleus from one of the mother’s eggs and inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed,” said the report.

“The resulting egg –- with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor -– was then fertilized with the father’s sperm.”

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http://punchng.com/worlds-first-baby-born-three-parent-technique/