Frozen embryo survived hurricane on way to life

By Pat Reber Jan 17, 2007, 1:48 GMT

Washington - The baby, appropriately, is called Noah.

Born Tuesday to a Louisiana couple, Noah Markham was only a frozen embryo when Hurricane Katrina swept floodwaters across New Orleans in August 2005.

But like the Biblical character who 'built the arc and saved his family and the animals and the generations' from a flood, Noah represents an unlikely miracle, his mother said in broadcast remarks Tuesday.

Rebekah Markham spoke to reporters from her hospital bed at St Tammany Parish Hospital near New Orleans, describing how the quick thinking of fertility lab officials and police officers from another state saved frozen embryos from the heat and turgid waters after the storm.

While she talked, an older child, Witt, born before the flood from the same batch of embryos, squealed and fussed over the 3.8 kilogramme baby in its mother's arms.

Katrina, one of the country's worst natural disasters ever, killed more than 1,000 people along the Gulf Coast, stranded tens of thousands of people for days in New Orleans and tore down Washington's image for its slow rescue response.

But the embryos from Rebekah and husband Glen Markham, along with about 1,200 others, were salvaged from the fertility institute at Lakeland Hospital in Eastern New Orleans, The Times-Picayune daily newspaper in New Orleans reported.

For days after the flood, Rebekah had other things on her mind than the frozen embryos. Her husband, 42, was a New Orleans police detective whose whereabouts were unknown for days, the newspaper reported.

After she finally heard from him, she turned her attention to the fate of their unborn children.

That's when she learned that the lab had used its emergency plan. Workers topped up the canisters at the clinic with chilling liquid nitrogen, including four canisters containing five Markham embryos. They were carried to the third floor out of reach of the floodwaters.

Dr. Brenda Sartol, one of the fertility staff, told the newspaper that she worried about the lack of electricity, and what it would do to the embryos, and pushed her contacts through to Governor Kathleen Blanco to get help.

'We were troubled about the embryos and how we could easily access the hospital,' Sartol was quoted as saying. 'The city was still in lockdown mode, and we knew it would have to be coordinated through a civil authority.'

The governor arranged for police officers from Illinois who had rushed to New Orleans to help out and local officers to pilot a flat boat through the flood and pick up the canisters.

From her hospital bed, Markham thanked the 'guys from Illinois' and the Louisiana state troopers and 'everyone involved' for 'helping me bring home a miracle.'

She said she prayed about the name 'because we wanted something special,' and came up with Noah.

Lieutenant Eric Bumgarner of the Illinois Conservation Police in the nation's Midwest said he was thrilled by the birth of children from those rescue efforts. He said day-to-day rescue work often makes workers 'callous.'

'But this was such a unique detail, and we understood the enormity of what this meant,' he was quoted as saying.