NZ 'designer baby' test mother six weeks pregnant

The first woman to undergo in New Zealand a controversial "designer baby" test used overseas is on the way to having a child.

Dr Richard Fisher, of Auckland fertility clinic Fertility Associates, said three patients were undergoing the testing, which is used with in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

One, a 39-year-old is six weeks pregnant after five years of recurrent miscarriages. "She's very excited," Dr Fisher said. "But she's been through many pregnancies before and a couple of IVF cycles as well.

"All the current monitoring suggests the pregnancy is progressing normally."

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD was approved by the Government with strict conditions in March. In the past, women had to go overseas to have PGD, which in New Zealand is permitted only to test for genetic or chromosome disorders including Down's syndrome and single-gene defects like Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis.

Overseas, PGD has also been used for selecting the sex of babies for social reasons and some New Zealanders went to Sydney for this until Australia banned the practice.

Dr Fisher said the woman, who did not want to be identified, had a "mixture of cells in her circulation and in her body" which put her at much higher risk than other women of having embryos with abnormal chromosomes, increasing the chance of miscarriage.

He said she had a 35 per cent chance of having a baby - about the same as other 39-year-olds having IVF.