My Sister's Keeper | Historical Context

My Sister's Keeper Historical Context

Designer Babies and Genetic Planning

In interviews describing the origin of My Sister's Keeper, Picoult talks of a news story from 2000. On August 29, 2000, Adam Nash was born. He was considered the world's first "designer baby." Like Anna in the novel, Adam was conceived for a specific purpose. His six-year-old sister Molly had an uncommon type of anemia, a genetic disease called Fanconi anemia (FA), in which the body cannot make healthy bone marrow. Doctors gave the child only a year to live. Medical professionals recommended to her parents, Jack and Lisa Nash, that the best chance for Molly to survive was to receive stem cells from a genetic match. Though the couple could conceive naturally, fifteen embryos were created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) with the couple's sperm and egg in a laboratory. Two embryos were perfect matches, and one was implanted in Lisa Nash. It became Adam.

After Adam's birth,...
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