Creating Children to Save Siblings’ Lives

Abstract

Life quickly got more complicated for the Ayala family when, in the Spring of 1990, they drew the attention of the popular and semitechnical press.¹ Only two years before, Abe and Mary Ayalas’ 17-year-old daughter, Anissa, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, a disease that rarely afflicts persons under the age of thirty. The only hope for a cure, the Ayalas were told, was to be found in a bone marrow transplant. Anissa’s old marrow would first be destroyed by radiation and chemotherapy. New marrow, donated by an individual whose antigens and tissue type were matched to Anissa’s, would then be injected through a vein. The search for a donor began. Members of the immediate family were tested and no match was found. More distant relatives of the family were tested, and again, no match was found. Transplant registries operating at the national level were contacted and they failed to identify a suitable donor. It seemed there was no other reasonable course of action left to try.