事件记录
Dr. 琼斯: What do you call a human egg five days after fertilization that's in the freezer? 这是博士. Kirtly Jones from Obstetrics and Gynecology at University of Utah Health, and this is 范围.
播音员: Covering all aspects of women's health, this is the Seven Domains of Women's Health with Dr. Kirtly Jones在Scope上报道.
Dr. 琼斯: 本周的新闻报道了一个活产婴儿, 胚胎产生的婴儿, 一个受精卵, preimplantation embryo that has maybe from 8 to 100 cells that was frozen 24 years ago. 据报道,, 这是冷冻和活产之间最长的时间, 至少大发娱乐知道是这样的, 至少在美国是这样.S. 在现实中, this record is going to be broken regularly as the technology which allowed us to freeze early preimplantation embryos became regularly used over 20 years ago. So more and more babies from embryos in long-term storage will be used. We'll be hearing about babies 30 years, 40 years, 50 years from conception and on and on.
现在, 就一小会, let's step aside into comparative reproductive biology and talk about bears. 冬天的熊. Bears and some 100 other animals do something called embryonic diapause. 很酷的名字，是吧？? 嗯，我觉得很酷. This is a natural process wherein a bear egg gets fertilized by a wandering bear sperm and progresses a few days and then stops growing, 通过大发娱乐不太了解的机制暂停, 好几个月. It just hangs out in the fallopian tube until a bear goes into hibernation, and then the preimplantation embryo implants and grows while a bear is hibernating. The goal is to postpone the birth until the appropriate environmental or metabolic conditions for the animal, 在这种情况下, 这只熊. The bear cubs aren't born until near spring when there will be an abundance of food. 这些处于假死状态的胚胎不是冷冻的. 它们在母亲体内，但直到后来才长大.
顺便说一下, 据大发娱乐所知, humans can't really do embryonic diapause in the mother's body, 但大发娱乐可以把胚胎放在冰箱里, 可能无限期. 在体外受精领域, usually a number of eggs are produced either by the biological mother or by an egg donor and then fertilized. 在美国.S., 大发娱乐在努力降低风险双胞胎的比率, 三联体, 通过植入一个或两个胚胎来生育四胞胎. 在美国.S., we offer the chance to freeze the rest of preimplantation embryos, 为了方便起见, 大发娱乐只需要给胚胎打电话, 但它们只有8到100个细胞.
现在, 这些不是在普通冰箱里的冰块托盘里冷冻的, but are very carefully frozen so as to not make ice crystals in the embryos and kept in liquid nitrogen. There are probably millions of cryo preserved embryos in the world with regulations about what can be done with them differing from country to country. 例如，目前在意大利，胚胎不能冷冻. 在美国.S., there aren't really any rules and regulations except that 试管婴儿 embryo labs must be certified. Being able to freeze unused embryos from an 试管婴儿 cycle allows couples to have another chance of becoming pregnant or have another baby, 如果他们愿意，也可以生更多的孩子. 但如果他们不想, 拥有自己想要的家庭规模的夫妇, 谁离婚了？, 或者谁太老了?
在美国.S.，大发娱乐为夫妻大发娱乐提供三种选择. 他们可以捐献胚胎用于研究. They can thaw the embryos without transferring them to a uterus and the embryos will die, or they can be donated to an embryo bank that allows for embryo adoption. The case of the baby recently born from an embryo created 24 years ago arose from a couple that received the embryo from an anonymous donation to an embryo bank that specializes in embryo donation, 国家胚胎捐赠中心. This child born to an infertile couple who desperately wanted children is possibly the best outcome for unwanted embryos.
然而，也存在一些问题. 他们的亲生父母是匿名的, so it'll be hard for the new parents and baby to know their genetic heritage. 当然, with more and more people choosing to search out their ancestry with genetic testing, 儿童和成人捐献的精子, 捐献者卵子, and donor embryos are finding genetically linked persons and figuring it out on their own. 在英国和澳大利亚, 有法律禁止匿名捐赠卵子, 精子, 和胚胎, and the genetic parents must be on file for the child to know about when they turn 18.
在美国.S., advanced reproductive technology is less regulated than in Europe, 那么冷冻胚胎的起源, 所谓的雪宝宝, 可以匿名. But between the donation of extra embryos from the couple 24 years ago and the so-called adoption of the embryos a year ago, 胚胎还在银行里的时候, 谁拥有它们？? 谁对他们负责? 他们的法律地位是什么? 他们应该有合法地位吗? 如果有卵子银行和精子银行, what do we think about commercial enterprises that create embryos, 你选择颜色, 种族背景, 无论, 卵子和精子捐献者的基因, 他们会为你制造胚胎出售? There's a little bit, actually a lot, of the yuck factor going on there for me.
最后, it's probably a good thing that couples who have excess frozen embryos don't have to destroy them if they don't want to. And it's a good thing that they don't have to use them if they already have the family that they want and want no more children. 这意味着大发娱乐有一个胚胎收养中心. It also means that couples who cannot make their own embryos for some reason but want to experience pregnancy and having a baby from birth can do so, but we're still left with some sticky issues like who's responsible for the embryos for quarter of a century, 或者半个世纪, 或者是一个没有合法父母的世纪, and what right does the grown person have to know who they are? So in this season of snow and miracle babies, thanks for joining us and the snow babies on 范围.
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