
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994                   TAG: 9405080122
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

HEALTHY BABY GIVES MEANING TO HOLIDAY

A year ago, Renee Abshire was impregnated with a fertilized egg that became her daughter, Brittany. It was a moment Abshire, who lost her first child to Tay-Sachs disease, thought would never happen.

She celebrated Mother's Day a little early Friday with 3-month-old Brittany, the first child born with a genetic guarantee of freedom from Tay-Sachs.

The party's hosts were the scientists of the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, who tested Brittany and declared her free of the deadly gene when she was only a cluster of eight cells in a lab dish.

The doctors on Friday passed Brittany back and forth and gushed over her long eyelashes and one tooth.

"It was about this time last year, wasn't it?" asked Dr. Suheil Muasher, who oversaw the in-vitro fertilization.

It was the first time Dr. Gary Hodgen, president of the institute, had seen Brittany. "I think this job's worth it," he told Brittany's father, David, as he cradled the baby in his arms.

"She is beautiful, isn't she?" said Dr. William Gibbons, who delivered Brittany.

For Hodgen, holding the child was the culmination of 15 years of work to develop a way to diagnose and screen out inherited diseases.

"Brittany is everything that we could have ever hoped and prayed for," Renee Abshire told the scientific team. "Thank you for having that dream."

At Friday's gathering, Renee Abshire was surprised to see Dr. Mimi Blitzer, who happened to be in Norfolk on business and saw Brittany's picture on a television news broadcast. Blitzer, a University of Maryland researcher, interviewed the Abshires shortly after their first daughter's death in 1989.

Blitzer was investigating the source of the unusually high Tay-Sachs occurrence in southwestern Louisiana. The Abshires live in DeRidder, La.

Since Brittany's birth in January, the Abshires have been guests on major TV news shows, and a TV movie is in the works. A clothing designer was so moved by their story that she donated nearly $700 worth of clothes for Brittany's many public appearances, including the pink suit decked with pearls and lace that she wore Friday.

Renee Abshire wiped tears from her eyes as she met the founders of the institute, Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones.

"You know, I haven't done this for quite a while," Jones said as he snuggled Brittany. "Shall we give her to Dr. Georgeanna?"

"That's the one that y'all worked so hard for," Renee Abshire told them. "Can I give you a hug? Words aren't adequate."

by CNB