Krystie Anna Karl-Steiger takes a break from play with her parents. The daughter of Rick Karl and Bruce Steiger, 15 months old in this photo, was conceived with a donor egg and a surrogate mother. The day before her first birthday, she was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, a neurological disease that usually kills its victims before age 5. Both the woman who provided the egg and Krystie’s biological father carry genetic mutation, and neither knew it. A simple blood test would have revealed the mutation. Many recipients and donors contact broker agencies with the assumption that screening and testing will be as thorough as the field of genetic science allows. That is not the case.
