Professor Seang Lin Tan's team at McGill Reproductive Center Montreal helped a Canadian mother to have her ovarian eggs frozen for her seven-year-old daughter to employ in the future. The girl is suffering from Turner's syndrome (chromosomal condition).

The doctors at the research centre called this as called the donation an act of motherly love. But this act arouses lot of ethical issues. If her daughter uses this ovarian egg in future, she will have her son or daughter who will be her half sibling.

Melanie Boivin said, “We were concerned about the ethical questions - would I look at the child as my grandchild or as my own? We were also concerned about the financial impact, the physical impact on me and the emotional impact on the family. What made us sure was the fact that I was there to help my daughter.

If I could do anything in my power to help her I had to do it and because of my age I had to do it now. I told myself if she had needed another organ like a kidney I would volunteer without any hesitation and it is the same kind of thought process for this. I do not want to oblige her to use the eggs; I want to give her the option.”

Melanie, who is 35 and a lawyer, did an enquiry to find whether she could do some thing to help her daughter and finally came up with this idea. The doctors there is the institute also gave her all assistance.

Professor Tan said, “The ethic committee agreed to it because the mother giving to a daughter is out of love and it is up to the daughter and partner in future years to decide whether to use the eggs or not. And ethical considerations change with time. Who knows what the ethics will be in 20 years from now.”

But the feedbacks are fairly negative from some other sources.

Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said, “One can understand the sadness of the mother in question but the proposed donation of eggs to be stored for her seven-year-old daughter with Turner Syndrome is not something to be welcomed. The psychological welfare of the baby itself has to be the principal concern. Such a baby would be a sibling of the birth mother at the same time as the direct genetic offspring of the grandmother donor. In psychiatry we are hearing more and more of children suffering from identity problems, and specifically a condition called 'genealogical bewilderment'. Could it possibly get more bewildering than this?”

Any way a matter of concern regarding identity will arise in this issue if the daughter chooses the option