The Miracle of Molly

In the Fall of 2000, Denver’s Lisa and Jack Nash genetically engineered a baby in an effort to save their dying little girl. Pastors and pundits said it was the first step down a stem-cell-paved road to Hell. Five years later, the Nashes give us an exclusive look at Heaven.

A Very Good Call

"How do you explain to a 5-year-old she's going to die?" That's the question Lisa asked herself. It's what kept her and Jack going. The Nashes took their case to yet another doctor, William B. Schoolcraft, at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. Schoolcraft is one of the country's top fertility specialists. One of Schoolcraft's colleagues had developed a process for stabilizing an embryo—growing it longer in the petri dish and giving it much better chance of impregnating.

Under Schoolcraft's care (and with Dr. "Buck" waiting in the wings to perform the PGD and tissue testing), Lisa endured in vitro for the fifth time in almost three years. A round of "big gun" fertility drugs helped Lisa produce 24 eggs, almost three times as many as she had previously. Half of the embryos were healthy, but only one had the winning combination of no FA and a bone marrow match. On Dec. 10, 1999, Schoolcraft implanted the single embryo. This, the Nashes thought, was their last shot.

Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, as Molly received a blood transfusion at Children's Hospital, Lisa's cell phone rang. It was Schoolcraft's secretary calling. A voice on the other end said, "Lisa, you're pregnant." She'd heard that before.