For all our knowledge,
sex, conception and the processes that lead up to birth
are still something of a mystery
But it's a mystery we're rapidly unravelling,
and the more we understand about the beginning of life,
the more we can change it
One day medicine may change the destiny of children
before they are even conceived
Medicine intervened in the fate of this baby long before he was born
This looks like a perfectly normal little baby boy,
but he's actually rather rare
The genes he's inherited from his parents weren't left to chance:
He was selected, and the science which produced him is now
taking all of us into uncharted territory
This programme will look at some extraordinary things
that can already be done when it comes to making babies
And it will explore the things that our ability to manipulate genes
are now making possible Question is: How far should we go?
Scientists are already trying to grow body parts from embryos;
Combine the DNA from three different people to produce a child;
And even trying to change the genes in sperm
which might ultimately lead to altering whole populations
Manipulating genes inevitably raises the spectre of the creation of a master-race,
the mad scientist bent on pursuing human perfection
is a standard of science fiction
Do you long for the days when you had a full head of hair?
Brothers, we can make baldness a thing of the past
Your children, and your children's children, need never fear ridicule again
We can stamp this out for ever Bald men of the world unite!
This is far-fetched, even Ludicrous
But the potential of what's being done today
is as exciting and disturbing as any science fiction
Any time we start to interfere with the stuff of life,
we have to tread carefully
But scientists think there is also tremendous potential for doing good
and that already we can see the benefits
Genetic disease is one of the commonest causes of death in babies
Recent scientific advances mean that it is possible for the first time
to offer something new to the casualties of inherited illnesses
Joshua was very small when he was born:
He was only five pound one and a half ounces,
and we had to go out and buy him special clothes
because he was too small to fit in the new-born baby things
He had a cough and cold and it was winter-time, and we were concerned
We took him to the doctor's four times in the end
And the doctor thought he had 'bronchitis'
and wanted him admitted to hospital that day
He then asked if Joshua had ever been tested for Cystic Fibrosis,
and we said no, and he said: Oh we must get the tests arranged
They'd said that really they'd done all they could do
and the situation was so bad now there was nothing more they could do,
all in the space of about forty minutes really
Then we decided to get him christened, didn't we?
Yeah, we asked to have the chaplain there
and so the chaplain came and they took all the monitors and everything off Joshua
because we didn't want him to die basically undignified really
And he died in my arms with Chris
holding us as well, wasn't it, and my mum was there as well
And then really I think he's actually-
he'd actually died when he actually got christened
Joshua died when he was four months old
He was Sue and Chris Paget-Dunthorne's first baby
They desperately want another child
but are terrified the same thing will happen again
On the Scilly Isles, just off the most Western tip of Britain,
another couple face the same dilemma
Jade was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis when she was just three months old
Jade is three now
Her family's day is taken up with managing her illness
Morning and evening, Jade's parents give her physiotherapy to break up
the mucus which threatens to clog up her lungs
She takes daily antibiotics and enzymes to help her digest food properly
She has little resistance to infection
Her life expectancy is low
We all have a number of abnormal genes which are harmless
unless our partner also happens to have the same genetic defect
Cystic Fibrosis is the most common genetic defect in Northern Europe
- roughly one in twenty of us carry the Cystic Fibrosis gene
When two carriers get together, they run a high risk of having an affected baby
Always wanted at least two - I always at least two
Think you wanted about three or four, but I'm happy with two
We both carry the CF gene,
so there's a one in four chance that we might have another CF baby
They say you can have a test in the early stages as well, and if- y'know,
you can have it aborted, again- which for both of us wasn't- wasn't an option
We didn't know whether we could make a decision to abort a baby
with Cystic Fibrosis knowing that Joshua had the condition,
or whether we could cope with a baby with Cystic Fibrosis
after losing a child to it. So we had some really serious thinking to do
At Hammersmith Hospital in London, a technique has been pioneered
which can help couples who know that they are at risk of having a baby
with the genetic disease, but who do not want to have an abortion
It's called PGD, or Pre-lmplantation Genetic Diagnosis
It involves growing embryos in the lab, then screening them for Cystic Fibrosis
This is the first follicle on the left
The chances of success are low,
but both couples have decided to try it
First, Sue's eggs have to be collected from her ovaries
OK, I've got three cells here, Stuart, just checking this
Yeah, that's the first egg Thank you
The ovary contains a number of follicles or sacs
Normally every month one follicle swells with fluid
and produces a mature egg ready for fertilisation
But for PGD more than one egg is needed,
so Sue's ovaries have been stimulated by drugs
The follicle is the dark area in the centre of the screen
You can see the needle go in, and the follicle shrink,
as a tiny egg is sucked out
That's another egg, that's fifteen now
Thanks Ben
After the eggs are collected,
all fifteen are fertilised by Chris's sperm in the lab
The fertilised eggs are left to grow for three days in an incubator
By then, six have become embryos and are ready to be tested
Each is so small it's invisible to the naked eye
In an incredibly delicate procedure, one cell is then removed
from each embryo and its genetic make-up tested
Even this early, it's possible to predict which of these embryos
will develop into a human with Cystic Fibrosis
That's because each cell contains all the genetic information
which goes into making the final human being
This remarkable photograph shows an embryo
after it's had a cell removed this way
It's been magnified many thousands of times
Astonishingly, even though a large chunk of the embryo
has had to be removed to do the tests,
it still goes on dividing and developing quite normally
Fiona had her eggs removed and fertilised three days ago
She and Pete are returning to the Hammersmith to see if
they've produced any healthy embryos
This is like the day we could get- you could become pregnant, so it's-
Yeah, D-Day!
Pete and Fiona have produced five embryos,
cells from which are now being tested
The DNA is separated by being run through a gel
Using an ultra-violet light,
Doctor Debbie Taylor can then tell
if any embryos will be affected by Cystic Fibrosis
This way, she can select which embryos to return to Fiona and which to reject
The diagnosis on No. 1 was...
The tests have shown there are four embryos
which don't have Cystic Fibrosis, and one which does
That looks like a normal...
Good evening, how are you?
Not too bad
This is the team, this is Dr. Debbie Taylor,
she's the scientist that was involved with the diagnosis
And this is Jonathan Taylor, he's our embryologist
OK, I think we should start off by saying it's good news...
Relax now
I'm sure this comes as a huge relief
We got results on five of the embryos
so we've actually in fact got a choice,
or a selection of the best embryos to put back
Now during the day those embryos have been in the incubator and developing
all the time, so what's going to happen now, while we get you changed,
John's going to pop up to the lab and actually have a look at
how the growth has gone during the day,
and really pick which are the best-looking embryos,
the ones that perhaps have grown and divided,
and we can decide on the best ones to put back
Good, hoorah.
Relieved?
Yeah
Sue and Chris are also coming into the hospital in the hope that
they too have produced embryos which are free of Cystic Fibrosis
But unknown to them, there's a problem
The genetic analysis didn't work on a single one of Sue and Chris's embryos
There is a chance that if I change the conditions slightly
that we can actually get it to work the second time round
Yes but it's now so late
Those embryos will be in culture a long time
Is it worth- really worth doing?
I think from what we see now, we ought to
Give it a go
Yeah, I'd like to give it a go
Now, it's unusual for this to happen, but we have been in this situation before,
and what we suggest is that we have a second go at analysing the results
...ask you to look after yourselves for a bit longer, if you don't mind
So Sue and Chris began a long wait
Meanwhile, Pete and Fiona have two healthy embryos transferred to the womb
...slowly see the catheter moving out of the uterus...
Dr. Debbie Taylor tried re-testing Sue and Chris's embryos
It was an extremely tense time
This sort of genetic testing is normally surprisingly reliable
In fact, they've only failed like this once before
No one knew if the tests would work a second time round
If they don't get a result the second time around,
they'll have to start the whole cycle again
This could take months
Just before midnight, and they're on the verge of knowing
if the second run of the tests has worked
Great, it's worked, yeah
You can actually see we've got two carriers,
so we've got something to transfer
Fantastic
Yeah, it's wonderful
So just after midnight, the medical team went through the deserted hospital
and opened up the theatre where they do the embryo transfers
Here's the two embryos we're going to transfer
Both have seven cells
one two three four five six seven in that one
One two three four five six seven in that one
And there's the little hole we drilled in it
where we were taking the cells for analysis
And they've grown since the biopsy
Not surprising, it's pretty late
So there's the two little embryos and the drop of fluid
which are invisible to the naked eye...
Sue and Chris, and Pete and Fiona now have to wait ten days to see
if the embryo transfer has been successful and if they've become pregnant
For them to become pregnant, the embryos that have been put back have to implant,
or stick into this, the lining of the womb
Now, for the first time ever, these photographs show how over
the course of a month, the lining of a woman's womb changes
so that it is in the best possible condition to receive the fertilised egg
Magnified on your screen up to a million times we discover a complex system,
much of which is still a mystery
During the first fourteen days of a woman's cycle,
a layer of cells starts to build up
Then suddenly the womb surface changes
...penapods appear The womb is now ready for the embryos
The penopods however last for less than two days
Then they, and the lining of the womb, start to deteriorate
Scientists now think it's normally during those brief
48 hours that an embryo can implant
This is a picture of an embryo that has implanted although
there's still no guarantee that it will go on to make a baby
Most fertilised eggs don't even get this far
Humans are amongst the most infertile animals on the planet
In fact, it's extraordinarily difficult for humans to get pregnant
Even a couple producing normal sperm and a normal egg
may not produce a normal embryo
And even when the embryo seems to be normal, there may still be a problem
All too often, the embryos just don't stick
The reason why embryos don't stick in normal or assisted pregnancies
is very often because the embryos just aren't good enough
Even when an embryo successfully implants and gets to six weeks,
like this one here, things can go wrong
Only one out of six pregnancies survive long enough to get up to eight weeks
There have been great improvements with genetic screening,
so it's sad and frustrating when embryos that have been screened
successfully don't go on and become babies
Scientists are trying to understand more about how embryos develop
so that they can improve the chances of a happy outcome
The desperate need to have a child, means that many couples
are prepared to try ever more experimental procedures
April and John Molinaire live in New Jersey
They describe themselves as everybody's favourite aunt and uncle
But they desperately want to be parents themselves
The reason they're not is because they can't produce viable embryos
April actually grew up two houses away from me,
so I've pretty much known her all my life
and I guess she's known me all her life, as far as that goes
We didn't want to start trying to have a baby right away,
so we were married for three years before we started trying to have a baby
And it's been a long five years
Because they didn't conceive normally, April and John had IVF treatment,
but after April's eggs were fertilised,
her embryos stopped growing normally and began to fragment and break up
Five out of the six embryos began to fragment
They weren't sure exactly why they were fragmenting
They gave us one good embryo and said this looks decently healthy,
and we tried it and it just didn't take, it- I mean,
that kind of devastated April and I because we never expected that to happen
Yeah, we just thought if we could fertilise an egg
that you-we would have a baby
That's all it would take
And didn't work like that
There are many reasons why an embryo might develop badly,
but in April's case her doctors think there's a problem with the cytoplasm,
the jelly that bathes the nucleus of each egg
When April's embryos develop,
instead of dividing symmetrically into a round ball of cells,
as a normal embryo would,
they start to develop abnormally, and then disintegrate
Hi, honey, how're you feeling?
Fine
Yeah?
They could try using donor eggs from another woman, but April and John
feel that it's very important that their child contains both their genes
So they're going to try a highly experimental approach
It's gonna work...
This is our last shot at having our own child
Not that I would have a problem having- y'know, using donor eggs,
I mean, that's definitely a possibility,
but if I had... my choice
I would, you know, want this to work out
So it's, y'know, very important
First, Cytoplasmic jelly is sucked out of another woman's egg
and then injected into April's egg
This jelly contains some DNA and nutrients
which power the cell's activities
April's doctors are hoping that the donor's cytoplasm
will jump-start cell division in April's egg
It's controversial, not least because it means that
any baby produced this way will be a kind of genetic cocktail
containing DNA from three people: John, April and the donor
The catheter will come in from the side of the screen
and the embryos will be drawn up into the catheter...
Several days later, doctors have four embryos to return to April
...very good... going to make some adjustments to the screen here,
now we're- can go ahead and get these embryos back where they belong
Hi, hun
Hi
How're you feeling?
Yeah, let's see 'em... Cool
So we can cut these things up if it does work
and send them out for Christmas cards?
Yeah, there you go
There you go Send it to our parents,
here's your grand kids: This is what they look like
Hey he looks good, yeah he does - he? Maybe it's a she, who knows?
I'm all? Honey, I just don't expect it not to work this time,
I think it's gonna work
Sadly, it didn't work. Yet again, the embryos failed to develop
April's problems start here with the egg
Once a month, in a shower of fluid, an egg bursts out of the ovary
and begins its journey down the Fallopian tube
Because it's a single cell,
holding the answer to a great many reproductive and genetic problems,
the egg is intensively researched
The egg is in limited supply
At birth, a girl has roughly a million eggs in her ovaries,
but they have already started to die off
By puberty, only a quarter of a million eggs are left
During her fertile years, one will be released each month,
and by her menopause almost all her eggs will have gone
The ovaries age much faster than the rest of the body,
and the eggs inside them seem to deteriorate
Genetic defects like Down's Syndrome become much more common as a woman,
and her eggs, age Fertility is also drastically reduced
So is there any way to slow this ageing process?
One way some doctors are trying to keep ovaries young
and fresh is by removing and preserving part of them
This young woman has cancer
and she's having ovarian tissue removed to try to
protect it from the anti-cancer drugs she has to take
Removing ovarian tissue is easy enough
Freezing and preserving it is also relatively simple
The problem comes when you take it out of the freezer and try to put it back
Belly-dancer, Margaret Lloyd-Hart, is the first woman in the world
to have her frozen ovarian tissue put back into her body
Margaret's ovaries were surgically removed for medical reasons,
but as a result she had an early menopause
When I realised how badly my life had been impacted, I needed to do something
and I was wondering if it would be possible to get it put back in again -
maybe there is a doctor out there who can do it
And I knew that it had never been done before
Margaret began her own quest to find someone
who would re-implant her frozen ovaries
Her search took her to New York,
where she finally found a doctor willing to operate
She'd heard about some trial operations done on sheep
They had actually taken their ovarian tissue out and frozen it
and put it back in
And it had some good success
And I thought that looked hopeful, but it hadn't been done on humans yet,
and that was the scary part
In February 1999,
Margaret became the first person to try this highly experimental surgery
Her ovarian tissue was defrosted, then surgically
re-implanted into her body using a laparascopic cannula
Once inside her body, the string of ovarian tissue was manoeuvred into place
For months, Margaret waited in New York
having a daily round of scans and hormone injections
Finally, after seven months,
her scan showed that the re-implanted tissue
had started to produce follicles or egg sacs
We were doing the sonogram and we noticed this dark area
and y'know both the doctor and technician thought that
it might be a follicle re-growing
So the next time we came in it seemed to be getting bigger,
and both of them seemed to be convinced that it really was,
and we were really excited
It was humbling because we were in the presence of a miracle
Margaret's re-implanted ovarian tissue meant that
in theory she could become pregnant using IVF
One thing we've certainly shown through this is that
you can mature a follicle to a certain stage
and then retrieve the egg and then fertilise that
So I am glad that I have the option now
I have an option that I didn't have a few months ago
Margaret, however, soon discovered her follicles only developed
if stimulated by large amounts of drugs
Convinced that they were making her feel unwell, she abandoned the experiment
But there is another approach,
and it may in the long term offer much greater benefits
Until now, scientists have been concentrating
on ways to grow eggs inside a woman's body
But why not try to grow eggs outside the body?
Like growing plants from seed,
growing eggs outside the body will only be possible
when researchers have found
the right genes, food and conditions for the eggs to develop
Work is progressing fast and many of the technical problems
have started to be cracked
Being able to grow human eggs as easily as
we now harvest mushrooms would benefit a wide range of people:
Cancer patients, who wanted to avoid exposing their eggs to chemotherapy;
Or women who wanted to delay getting pregnant would be able
to store ovarian tissue and have their eggs matured later
But the greatest advantage would be for routine IVF, making it much simpler
Women would no longer need to take expensive drugs,
nor to attend hospital for endless monitoring
Growing eggs outside the body would also help research
in another area which people feel passionate about
Scientists are trying to find out if they can make human tissue
for transplantation using eggs or embryos
Opponents, however, see this as nothing more than using embryos as spare parts
This is what the argument's about: A six-day old embryo
Some of the cells in this embryo have the potential
to develop into any part of the body
From one cell you could grow new brain tissue to treat Parkinson's,
or cardiac tissue to repair a heart
And ultimately, perhaps, even limbs
This rat arm has been grown in culture from a rat embryo,
but would we want to go this far and try to grow human limbs and organs
from the cells of human embryos?
Growing limbs in test-tubes is really the stuff of horror films
There's an old myth about a Frankenstein - like creature called the Golem
which sums up the dilemma that experimenting
with human eggs and embryos poses
According to Jewish legend, a rabbi made a Golem,
a fantastically powerful creature, out of clay and water
The recipe for making a Golem is there on the wall
The rabbi made the Golem with the best of intentions: To help people
Once he'd been assembled, the rabbi brought the Golem to life
by putting the Hebrew words of truth into an amulet on its chest
The Golem is like the Frankenstein myth, but much older
The common theme to both is the monster whose powers, once unleashed,
even its creators are unable to control
These stories are so powerful
because they tap right into a common and very reasonable fear:
The fear that once we begin to mess with the beginnings of life,
even with the best of intentions, we run risks
But these fears need to be kept in perspective
At the moment, what can be done is both very limited and not very successful
Mixing April's eggs with donor cytoplasm didn't get her pregnant
It didn't work
It just didn't take
It just did not take there was no pregnancy
Maybe because of the manipulation, maybe because it just- there was a problem-
they- honestly, they couldn't tell us any reason why,
and there's really no way to determine a reason, exact reason
April and John are now having a further round
of conventional IVF treatment using donor eggs
in the hope that this will give them the baby they so desperately want
Back in England, ten days have passed
since Pete and Fiona had their embryos transferred
Fiona had a pregnancy test
and now they're anxious to hear if the treatment's worked
Hello?
Hello, is that Mrs. Hingston?
Yes
It's Stuart Labour here at the Hammersmith
Hello
How are you?
Not too bad
We've just had the result of your blood test come through
Right. And the result is a very weak Positive
Right. So really what we need to do is to repeat the test
in a week's time to see what's happening
All right then
All right?
Yeah
OK, Mrs. Hingston
Thanks very much
If you've got any worries, then just give us a call here at the Hammersmith
Yeah, will do OK
Thank you All right
Bye. Bye-bye. Bye
What did he say?
It's slightly positive
At least it's not 'no'
But unfortunately, her embryo didn't take
We got told the phone call would be about 3 o'clock,
and the phone rang at half past two, and it was:
Who was going to go and answer the phone
And in the end I went and answered it
And it was the result we wanted, telling us that
we were going to have another pregnancy
Started buying a few things
And I started painting a mural on the wall in the baby's bedroom,
and tried to make it into a new bedroom for a new baby,
really, 'cause we'd always called it Joshua's room
We didn't have any hope before, but now we've got hope,
something to look forward to for the future
Sue and Chris are lucky. PGD only works at roughly 18% of attempts
So might there be a more effective way that
scientists could use their increasing knowledge of genetics?
Perhaps scientists have been looking at the wrong thing
They've been concentrating on the egg because
it is relatively speaking large and easy to manipulate
But eggs are fragile and in limited supply
Embryos are even more precious and work with them
raises a lot of ethical difficulties for society
But there is a blindingly obvious alternative
After all, it takes two elements to make a baby
The answer may be sperm
One thing most men are good at is producing sperm
In the course of watching this programme, so far,
women in their child-bearing years will have lost on average three eggs
Men, on the other hand, will have produced two million sperm,
each one carrying half the genetic information needed to make a child:
An inexhaustible and easily tapped supply
Men produce sperm from puberty into old age
A man can often father a child until the day he dies,
and every sperm he makes during that lifetime carries a genetic blueprint
When doctors do genetic screening for Cystic Fibrosis,
they wait till the sperm has fertilised the egg
and test the embryo that develops
But why wait until you've got an embryo?
Why not go back a stage further?
Why not change the genetic material of the sperm?
It's hugely controversial with massive implications
The sperm that is ejaculated during orgasm is actually three months old,
and it's the final stage of a non-stop factory generating
and maturing sperm at the rate of 1,000 a second
Inside the testes are thousand of pipes: The tubules
Within these are millions of germ cells whose job
is to produce sperm to a genetic blueprint
If we change that blueprint,
the genetic make-up of the sperm is changed for ever,
and so would be the genetic blueprint of any human conceived by those sperm
Scientists may one day be able to stop diseases
being inherited by manipulating sperm
At the moment, they're trying to work out how to do that using mice
Supposing you wanted to make mice that glowed in the dark?
What you might do is to take the fluorescent gene from a jelly-fish
and inject it into the testes of a mouse
If that gene got into the cells which make the sperm,
then something dramatic might happen
lts children would inherit the glowing gene,
and so would their children and their children's children:
You'd have a new strain of mouse,
because what you'd have done is to change their genetic make-up for ever
The point of developing this form of genetic engineering
is not of course to produce novelty mice
The point is to save human lives
The sort of people it might help are people like those here in Sardinia
In this Mediterranean island, one in eight people
carry the gene for a dreadful inherited disease
Each June, Sardinians hold a festival which is something of a fertility rite
Traditionally, these lassooers are allowed to kiss anyone they catch,
but courtship here has a darker side
It spells the possibility of two carriers getting together and having a sick child
Even amid the festivities,
the Mamatones with their ancient masks
seem to reflect the island's blight
No one knows what the demonic features really represent,
or the origins of the dance, but with their high foreheads and sunken cheeks
they show a marked similarity to something else
that's been in this island since recorded time
All the children on this ward have Beta-thallasemia,
an inherited and lethal blood disease
Their lives revolve around this hospital
Their bodies can't make normal red blood cells,
so every two to three weeks they need a lengthy blood transfusion
If it's left untreated, Betathallasemia causes bone deformation,
multiple illnesses and early death
Even with the high level of care these children are getting,
life expectancy is short
Betathallasemia is the world's most widespread genetic defect
Hundreds of millions across the globe carry this terrible gene
These days all pregnant women on the island are routinely tested
and almost all opt for abortion if they find that
they are carrying a baby with the disease
It's a huge emotional cost for people in this Catholic country,
and a huge economic burden
At the moment, screening is the most effective weapon that
modern medicine has against genetic disease
But even screening can fail
Manuelli has Betathallasemia
His mother, Faviana, knew she was a carrier of the gene,
but when they got married her husband thought he wasn't
He said that he wasn't because tests he'd had showed that he wasn't
Then when I became pregnant with Manuelli,
we did more tests to put our mind at rest so as to be completely sure,
and that's when we discovered that he, too, was a carrier.
Manuelli is currently waiting for a bone marrow transplant
It's the only thing that offers any hope to children who have Betathallasemia
But suitable donors are rare and it doesn't always work
Despite their best efforts, the gene that causes Betathallasemia goes on
being handed down from father to son,
and there's nothing we can currently do which will change that
For thousands of years, civilisations on Sardinia
have lived with Betathallasemia
The island now employs every tactic modern medicine has to offer,
but as things currently stand,
Sardinians like Manuelli, and his family will go on passing the gene
that causes Betathallasemia down the generations
One day there might be a radical solution to this problem,
but it requires a huge leap into the unknown
It would involve replacing the defective Thallasemia gene
in carriers of the disease while they were still very young
The way it could work in somewhere like Sardinia,
is that all the boy babies would have healthy genes injected into their testes
As they grow up, they might produce sperm that's free of disease
If it worked, the babies of these children would be permanently changed,
as would their children's children
The different elements necessary to make such a thing work are coming together
Work around the world shows that such a thing is likely to be possible
Put like that, it sounds simple
In fact, there are enormous practical and ethical problems to be overcome
We humans are products of millions of years of gradual change
Altering a single gene may have catastrophic
implications that we just can't predict
What's worse, such mistakes might not emerge for many generations
Genetic mutations have often survived in people because
they offer their carrier some other benefit
The Betathallasemia gene protects its carrier against malaria,
at one time a major killer in Sardinia
The interconnected nature of genes is one of the things that
makes changing them such a risky business
And people are also concerned that if genetic engineering becomes available,
someone will create designer babies
There may be combinations of genes which predispose people
to greater beauty or intelligence
The idea that one day those with enough money could buy these attributes
for their children is at the heart of many people's fears about genetics
Developments in genetics offer hope and threat,
as do many of the emerging technologies we've featured in this series
Whether it's transplanting arms,
or injecting genes into hearts to grow new blood vessels,
there are dangers
Superhuman medicine is dragging us,
kicking and screaming, into a brave new world
One for which few of us are yet fully prepared
All human progress involves taking risks, but it also brings opportunities
Change is happening faster than ever before,
and in the coming decades,
society will have to learn how to control the power of these new technologies
if they are to be used to improve the lives of all of us
After all, this is what technological advances should be about
I can see about that much of the baby's face
Beautiful
Technology has allowed Sue and Chris to have a new baby son, Ethan,
who they can welcome into the world confident he doesn't have Cystic Fibrosis
and that the heart-ache they previously suffered won't be repeated
Our medical advances are being developed in the hope that
all little superhumans like him will have the best chance
there is to live a happy, healthy life