China parents conceive baby to collect umbilical cord blood to save daughter with severe disorder

A 15-year-old Chinese girl who has been suffering from a severe blood disorder most of her life is slowly recovering after receiving a transplant from her newborn brother. Xiaoyan from southern China’s Guangdong province is now only 140cm tall, and weighs just 25kg. She was diagnosed with thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, at three months old. Her father, a construction worker, and her jobless mother did not arrange standard treatment for her except for regular blood transfusions. It w...

By Fran Lu