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Friday, January 24, 2003The eye cancer research was prompted when Dutch doctors diagnosed the disease, called retinoblastoma, in five children within a 15-month period. Normally, one child in 17,000 is expected to develop the disease. They compared the incidence of the disease in IVF-conceived children with that in the general population. They calculated that the risk in IVF children may be between five and seven times higher, though the disease would still be rare. ...The second study, published in the January issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, looked at a national US registry of patients with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome (BWS). Children born with BWS have an increased risk of developing various cancers. Up to June 2001, four of the 279 BWS patients in the registry were known to have been conceived by IVF. Suspecting an association, the investigators began collecting details about conception methods for new patients entering the registry. They found that three of the 65 new patients were conceived by IVF. This represents an incidence of 4.6 per cent, nearly six times higher than the 0.8 per cent incidence of assisted births in the general US population. But the researchers caution that, although they did not specifically recruit parents who had used IVF, such parents may have been more likely to participate in the study. And, again, even if their findings are confirmed, BWS would still be very rare even among IVF babies. Warrants watching. Modern medicine is very much a novice when it comes to molecular genetics and developmental biology. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if it turns out that manipulating eggs and sperm in a petri dish has consequences of which we aren’t completely aware. posted by Sydney on 1/24/2003 08:11:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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