Gene Shopping: Parents Won't Pass on Deadly Diseases with New Procedure

March 8, 2007 — -- There's no doubt that blue-eyed Chloe Kingsbury is a special kid, but how she came into this world can only be described as exceptional.

Chloe's father, Chad Kingsbury, carries a gene for a deadly genetic colon cancer that has taken the lives of four family members, including his mother and grandfather.

"I have seen what this disease can do firsthand. I held my mother's hand while she died," he said. "I look at my grandma. Every time I see her there is an emptiness there. She lost all three of her children, and I just … I just couldn't do that."

Since he carries the gene, Chad has an 85 percent chance of getting colon cancer and his offspring have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the gene.

But a new advance in genetics and reproductive medicine called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, which uses in vitro fertilization has allowed the Kingsburys to bring Chloe into the world with no fear of getting the disease.

"[PGD] is basically getting a diagnosis of an embryo prior to implantation or prior to pregnancy," said Renee Genovese, who works in clinical and molecular genetics at the Reproductive Genetics Institute.

When they decided to have their second child, the Kingsburys invited "Good Morning America" to join them as they went through the process again at Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago. The couple freely admits that despite the success with Chloe, going through with the procedure has not been an easy decision.

"The whole thing sounded incredibly foreign and expensive and then there was this whole debate going on … about if we really needed to do this," Chloe's mother Colby Kingsbury said.

The process starts with in vitro fertilization, where a mother's eggs are retrieved from her ovaries. In the Kingsburys' case, 16 of Colby's eggs were extracted, and each one was combined with Chad's sperm to form an embryo. The procedure was repeated 16 times, giving the lab 16 embryos to work with.

A few days later, when the embryo had grown to just eight cells, one cell was removed from each embryo for genetic testing.