The Boy Who Wasn't Short by Kirk Edwin;

Author:Kirk, Edwin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: MED107000, SCI034000, SCI029000, TEC059000, MED082000, SCI101000, SCI075000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2021-05-12T16:00:00+00:00

8

How to make a baby

All you need is love

JOHN LENNON

There’s a slogan popular among those opposed to same-sex marriage: ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’. Increasingly, around the world, Adam and Steve can get married. They can even have children — but only with the help of someone to provide an egg, and someone to carry the baby. We’re nowhere close to developing an artificial womb, but could Adam and Steve dispense with the egg donor, and have children to whom both are biological parents? Equally, could Anna and Eve skip the sperm donor?

The answer to that question may soon be yes.

The question might also be posed this way: could Adam make an egg? Could Eve make a sperm?

Which leads to the question: what are eggs and sperm, anyway? And could we make them without the aid of ovaries and testicles? Surprisingly, the answer lies in part with a little boy, hovering on the edge of death.

James was just three when, one day, all of his muscle cells fell apart.

He had been a happy, healthy boy, always on the go, an explorer. Like any small child, he had had his share of colds and other minor illnesses, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then he ran into a virus that stressed his body just slightly more than the others had — and uncovered a vulnerability that had always been there, but had never before revealed itself. James woke one morning cranky and irritable, complaining of pains in his legs. Then he collapsed. His mother called an ambulance, which only just got him to the hospital in time.

Your muscles contain an enzyme called creatine kinase, shortened to CK. It’s an important enzyme, but for this story it doesn’t really matter what it does — just that muscle cells contain a lot of it, and, when they die, CK is released into the bloodstream. Muscle cells wear out and are replaced all the time, so there’s always a little bit of CK in your blood. Normally, that would amount to less than 200 units of enzyme per litre — more if you’ve just run a marathon, but not usually a lot more. The first time I heard about James was from the intensive care specialist who was looking after him. He was marvelling at James’s CK. ‘500,000! It must be a world record!’ And he thought the problem must surely be genetic, which was why I was there.

Record or not, it was bad news for James.

The problem did turn out to be genetic — James had two faulty copies of a gene called LPIN1, which is important for keeping the lining of muscle cells stable and strong. In its absence, his muscle cells were fragile, needing only a small push — for example, from what would otherwise be a mild viral infection — to make them break down completely. The same virus that might have given you a runny nose and some aches and pains was potentially a deadly threat to James.

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