Aggregated News
CAMBRIDGE — Anne Morriss’s first step toward starting a company to test the DNA of women and their prospective sperm donors began with a question so surreal she could barely make sense of it.
A voice on the phone asked whether her baby boy, just a few days old and sleeping peacefully in the next room, was still alive.
“Can you go check and confirm and come back to the phone?” Morriss recalls the caller asking.
Only afterward would the man, phoning with results from the state’s newborn screening test, explain that her son had tested positive for a rare and potentially fatal genetic disorder that prevented him from converting certain fats into energy.
For the first few years of Alec’s life, he would need to be fed every few hours. A stomach bug could be deadly.
The news five years ago came as a shock; when Morriss and her spouse, Frances Frei, decided to start a family using a sperm donor, they had been selective. They found a reputable sperm bank. They combed through pages of data on athletics...
A voice on the phone asked whether her baby boy, just a few days old and sleeping peacefully in the next room, was still alive.
“Can you go check and confirm and come back to the phone?” Morriss recalls the caller asking.
Only afterward would the man, phoning with results from the state’s newborn screening test, explain that her son had tested positive for a rare and potentially fatal genetic disorder that prevented him from converting certain fats into energy.
For the first few years of Alec’s life, he would need to be fed every few hours. A stomach bug could be deadly.
The news five years ago came as a shock; when Morriss and her spouse, Frances Frei, decided to start a family using a sperm donor, they had been selective. They found a reputable sperm bank. They combed through pages of data on athletics...