Medicine: Amazing Births

Babies from "donor eggs "

When the 25-year-old woman saw her healthy newborn son, she wept tears of joy and relief. A typical reaction, one might say. But the circumstances were extraordinary. Five years ago the mother had been diagnosed as prematurely menopausal: her ovaries had ceased to release eggs or to produce the hormones needed to sustain a pregnancy. The child she had carried for nine months was the genetic offspring of another woman, who had donated an unfertilized egg. The birth of the world's first "donor-egg baby" in November, which was announced last week by scientists in Australia, marks a...

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