Great Op-ed in the
LA Times today.
Of course, I'm biased, the embryo that made it turned into my niece!
Just about nine years ago, I nervously picked up the phone and called a fertility clinic in Boston to see if my husband and I had made embryos. We had! After trying -- and failing -- to have a baby any other way, we were on our way to making one via IVF, in vitro fertilization. After weeks of shots that slowed down and then jump-started my ovaries, I had produced a slew of eggs that were extracted while I was under general anesthesia. These were introduced in a petri dish to my husband's sperm.
Fertilization took place. I was the proud mother of six embryos. We headed from Maine to Boston, where three embryos were transferred into my uterus.
I remember a doctor asking us about the other three embryos, which didn't appear robust enough to freeze for future attempts at IVF. We had a choice: discard them or donate them to scientific research.
Extended entry for more....
We gave them to science. And I didn't give them another thought. My heart was wrapped around the three embryos I carried inside me. I'd lie in bed and visualize them nestling into my uterine wall. "Please, just one of you stick around. Or two," I'd whisper to my little embryos. I pinned my dreams of motherhood to them.
Now, however, those embryos, and others like them, are back on my mind. In fact, I'm hanging my dreams on them.
Those little clumps of cells that held a promise of future parenthood for my husband and me could also hold the potential of good health for people with an array of devastating conditions. That's because they are the source of stem cells with the remarkable potential of developing into different cell types to repair or replace body systems that aren't working right.
I have multiple sclerosis, one of the diseases that researchers think they might be able to treat or even cure with stem cells. Here I sit, on either end of embryonic stem cell research, trying to find some connection between my embryos and the research that might help me and countless others with MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or other debilitating conditions.
Read it all here.