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Scientists are puzzling over why a controversial fertility technique that
creates “genetically modified” babies
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has produced fetuses with a serious genetic disorder. Two of 17 fetuses created by
Jacques Cohen and Jason Barritt at the Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New
Jersey had Turner’s syndrome and were aborted. The disorder affects girls, and
is caused by the total or partial loss of a sex chromosome. “Two Turner’s out of
17 is pretty unusual,” says Masoud Afnan, director of the Assisted Conception
Unit at Birmingham Women’s Hospital.