Woman freezes eggs for daughter's future use
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 | 1:59 PM ET
CBC News
A woman in Montreal has frozen some of her eggs for her six-year-old daughter to use in the future, which her doctors say is a medical first.
Melanie Boivin's daughter has Turner's syndrome, a condition that occurs when one of the two X chromosomes normally found in females is missing or incomplete. It occurs in about one out of every 2,500 female births, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
'It is the same as if she would have needed any other kind of organ.' — Melanie Boivin on donating eggs for her daughter
Girls with Turner's syndrome may have short stature and underdeveloped female sexual characteristics at puberty. They often enter menopause early and become infertile at a young age.
Boivin, 36, took a year to ponder the ethics and other questions; if her daughter decides to use one of the 21 eggs some day, whose child would it be? Boivin would be the child's biological mother, but she decided motherhood depends not just on genes, but on who takes care of the child.
"It is the same as if she would have needed any other kind of organ, for example a kidney," said Boivin. "I would have given it to her without any kind of hesitation."
Flash freezing
About two years ago, researchers in Montreal developed a technique to flash freeze eggs, which allows more of them to survive than with previous methods.
It is more difficult to freeze eggs than sperm, because the female cells are large, fragile and filled with water. With traditional slow methods of freezing, about half of the eggs survive, while the others are damaged as ice crystals form.
The more efficient technique, called vitrification, was developed by Seang Lin Tan, a fertility specialist at McGill, and Ri-Cheng Chian, scientific director of the McGill Reproductive Centre.
Boivin's case was the first time a woman has frozen her eggs for her daughter, said Chian, who said it opens a window of possibilities for other women whose daughters cannot have children of their own.
The new technique has already helped give birth to 20 babies, he said. Healthy women who want to increase their chances of conceiving when they are older are also using the technique.
Pregnancy rates with vitrification appear to be about the same as with fresh eggs, said Tan.
