How was the first French baby medicine designed?
Discover the history of the first French baby-medicine.
Medication Baby, Doctor Baby, or Double Hope Baby refers to a child conceived for the purpose of curing an older sibling with an incurable and fatal hereditary disease. He is genetically selected so as not to be affected by the family disease and also to be a donor compatible with his eldest child. Hence the double hope baby name. A little boy, Umut-Talha (in Turkish “our hope”) was born on January 26, 2011 by in vitro fertilization after a double pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). It was designed to save one of his elders from a serious genetic disease, beta thalassemia.
The conception of the first drug baby
The team of Prof. Frydman, scientific father of the first French test-tube baby, carried out in vitro fertilization using the mother’s eggs and the father’s sperm. Twenty-seven embryos were obtained. A double preimplantation diagnosis (double DPI or DPI HLA compatible) made it possible to select two embryos not carrying the disease. In contrast, only one of them was compatible with one of the couple’s elders. “The parents asked that the two embryos be transferred because what they wanted above all was another child. Only the compatible embryo has developed at term, the other has disappeared, as sometimes happens, ”explained Prof. Frydman.
Umut is considered by doctors to be “the baby of double hope”. The hope for his parents to have a child who will not suffer from the same genetic disease as his siblings. And the hope of saving one of them.