Jul 4 2007
A Canadian mother has taken the unique step of donating her eggs to her daughter to ensure she can have a child.
The 35-year-old Montreal woman has donated her eggs as insurance for the day her daughter becomes infertile.
Melanie Boivin's daughter Flavie has Turner syndrome, which means one of her two X chromosomes is missing or incomplete which will make her infertile.
Boivin who is a lawyer for Health Canada, has had 21 eggs frozen for her 7-year-old daughter who could essentially one day give birth to a half-brother or half-sister.
This is the first case of a mother-to-daughter egg donation, and Dr. Seang Lin Tan, director of the McGill Reproductive Centre, speaking at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France, said Boivin wants her daughter to have a chance of having a baby.
Tan says an independent McGill University ethics committee approved the donation because Boivan was doing it out of love for her daughter.
Tan says Flavie would not contribute any DNA to the embryo, so the risk of genetic defects would be the same as with any two unrelated people.
Dr. Tan believes the case will lead to other mothers having their eggs frozen for daughters with medical conditions such as cancer.
Tan is the pioneer of a patented technology that rapidly freezes fragile eggs, protecting them from forming ice crystals, which can damage cells.
Experts say mother-to-daughter donation provides one more option for people with infertility and there is a shortage of egg donors in Canada since legislation in 2004 prohibits a woman from selling her eggs.
Other experts caution that Boivin's donation might be too late as egg freezing is best done at younger ages and most studies show only one to five per cent of frozen eggs will result in a live birth.