Chris Biblis was only 13 years old when he was diagnosed with leukaemia. He underwent three years of intensive chemotherapy to try and combat the disease. When he was 16, doctors told him they wanted to try radiotherapy. Unfortunately radiotherapy carries a very high risk of rendering the patient sterile and both Chris and his parents were concerned that he would never be able to have children, so they decided to freeze a sample of his sperm.
When Chris was 18, he recovered and he has been disease free for 20 years.
He later married Melodie, a pediatric nurse and in June 2008 they thawed out his sperm and had intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where a single sperm is injected into the egg.
Melodie had 15 eggs retrieved, and of those, 10 were usable. Embryologists attempted to fertilize all ten remaining good eggs and they were able to fertilize seven of them. Two were put back into Melodie's womb, and only one took.
Baby Joy
Luckily, they conceived with one of the embryos at the first attempt and 9 months later, little Stella Biblis was born on 4th March 2009, weighing a healthy 7lbs, 7ozs, and she appears to be normal.
Xytex International, the company who froze Chris's sperm, claim to have beaten the world record for the amount of time a sperm is frozen before it is used to fertilize an egg.
"We believe this is a world record", said Bonnie Schwab, a spokeswoman for the doctors who treated the Biblis couple.
When Stella is older, they hope to give her a brother or sister, as they still have five embryos on ice and some sperm that has not yet been used.
“We have several more tries with already-fertilized eggs,” Melodie Biblis said. “That is good, because I'm not the youngest mom in the world.”
Another Baby With Older Genes
Little Stella Biblis is not the only baby girl to have been born after her genes had been frozen for 21 years. Madison Decker, who was born in August 2008, also holds the same title.
Her father, Ken Decker, had cancer when he was 24 and the chemotherapy he endured, rendered him infertile. At the time he was only interested in furthering his career and playing sports, including being an active scuba diver, so he didn't really consider how his cancer treatment may impact on his fertility. It was his mother who advised him to bank some sperm.
Ken Decker said, "I said okay (to banking sperm) because I did what mom said to do."
He now has his mother to thank for the fact that he was able to become a father.
When he married his wife Michelle in 2004, they discovered that the sperm he had frozen were not viable, so he assumed he would never be a dad.
Then intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) was invented, a technique where only one viable sperm is needed, instead of a whole sample. This method greatly increased the success rates for men who had very few viable sperm or a very low sperm count, and it meant that Ken could father a child when it was previously thought impossible.
Three years of IVF attempts later, Michelle finally got pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Madison.
Only time will tell, however, if having their genes frozen for so long will have any long term health impacts on the girls, or on their ability to have children themselves.
Source: Reproductive Endocrinology Associates of Charlotte, NC.
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