Creating ‘Designer babies’ to help their sick brother or sister get legal

In a unanimous decision, five Law Lords in the UK have ruled that families can legally create babies to help their sick brother or sister; the authority would come from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, UK.

This ruling is the result of an appeal by the Hashmi family, whose son who was born with thalassaemia major. The Hashmi’s say the only hope for their son, who is now six years old, is to create a child with the same tissue type.

Zain (the son) has to have regular transfusions plus loads of medications throughout the day. Thalassaemia major is s serious genetic disorder. Patients with thalassaemia major doe not produce enough red blood cells.
Doctors aim to take stem cells from the newborn’s umbilical cord and transplant them into Zain.

The boy’s parents, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, did go ahead with the controversial treatment to produce a sibling, hoping to have a baby with the same tissue type as their son Zain in order to treat his rare blood disorder.
Their attempt failed tragically when Shahana Hashmi, 38, suffered a miscarriage.
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Microsoft Corp NI double, revenue fell

Microsoft Corp saw its net income nearly double from a year ago, but revenue fell short of Wall Street forecasts due to leaner licensing business and a sharp drop in the U.S. dollar’s value.

For the quarter ending March 31, the Redmond, Wash.-based company earned $2.56 billion US, or 23 cents per share, up from $1.32 billion, or 12 cents per share, a year ago.

Microsoft’s latest quarter included stock-compensation expenses and a charge of $768 million, or five cents a share, related to legal expenses, while the year-earlier period had $2.53 billion, or 17 cents a share, in legal charges.
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Certain types of HRT increases womb cancer

Certain types of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increase a woman’s risk of endometrial cancer, research suggests. HRT preparations containing estrogen only increase the risk of endometrial cancer. To reduce the risk, many women take combined estrogen-progestagen preparations or tibolone a synthetic steroid with hormonal activity. However, little information exists on the risk of womb cancer in users of these therapies.

HRT replaces the natural hormones in the body to relieve unpleasant symptoms of the menopause, such as hot flushes and mood swings.

The new study suggests that HRT with estrogen only or with tibolone increases the risk of endometrial cancer, while the addition of progestagen counteracts that effect. Tibolone is prescribed in many countries outside of the US to treat menopausal symptoms.

In the study, Dr. Valerie Beral, at the University of Oxford, and colleagues collected information on HRT use in approximately 720,000 postmenopausal women who had no history of cancer and had not had a hysterectomy. During an average of 3.4 years follow-up, 1,320 women developed endometrial cancer.
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HRT may increase risk of womb cancer

Certain types of hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) increase a woman’s risk of womb cancer while others do not, concludes a study published in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

Many post-menopausal women, who have not had a hysterectomy, use combined HRT (containing progestagen and oestrogen) or tibolone (synthetic HRT), because oestrogenonly preparations are known to increase the risk of womb cancer. But little information exists on the incidence of womb cancer in users of these other therapies.

Valerie Beral (Cancer Research UK and University of Oxford) and colleagues recruited 717 000 postmenopausal women from the UK, aged 50-64 years, who had no previous history of cancer and had not had a hysterectomy, into the Million Women Study, between 1996 and 2001. The women filled in questionnaires about their use of HRT and other personal details and were followed up for an average of 3•4 years. Just under half of the women reported that they had used some form of HRT.1320 womb cancers were diagnosed at follow-up.

The investigators found that, compared with women who had never used HRT, women who last used oestrogen-only HRT or tibolone had a higher risk of womb cancer overall and that the risk increased with longer use of tibolone.
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