Vitro

Vitro Corp. of Rockville announced yesterday that it has won a five-year subcontract worth up to $50 million to help develop a bTC computer system for the Department of Defense.Vitro, a subsidiary of Tracor Inc. of Texas, won the subcontract from Unisys Federal Systems Division in McLean, Va. Unisys is developing an integrated defense information system called the DEIS II program.The overall contract for the DEIS II system is valued at $3 billion.Vitro's role will include providing software engineering tools, processes and personnel to upgrade existing systems at the Defense Information Systems Agency, which oversees the DEIS II program.

Lesley Brown, who was the first mother to have a child via in vitro fertilization, has died, according to the Telegraph. The birth of her daughter Louise made history in 1978. Lesley died at age 64 after a brief illness. Sad news indeed -- she went through the procedures after nine years of trying to get pregnant on her own, according to MSNBC . As the mother of a 4-year-old son conceived through IVF, I'm so thankful for the bravery of the family and for the pioneering researchers, as well.

The Penn Central Corp. announced yesterday that it intend to sell all of its non-insurance operating units, including the Vitro Corp., the company's large defense operations in Silver Spring.Vitro, which has about 1,600 employees at the Maryland complex, is involved in systems and software engineering services to the Navy, Air Force, Army and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration.Philip A. Hagel, vice president and treasurer of Penn Central, said the Navy was Vitro's biggest contractor.

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Texas-based Tracor Inc. said yesterday that it had signed an agreement to acquire Vitro Corp., a defense company in Silver Spring. At the same time, state officials, concerned about the potential loss of 1,900 jobs, said they were negotiating with the two companies to ensure that the operations remain in Montgomery County.Under the agreement, Tracor, based in Austin, will pay $94 million in cash for Vitro, the defense contracting arm of Penn Central Corp. Vitro ranks among Maryland's largest defense companies.

Babies conceived by in-vitro fertilization may be at increased risk for a rare genetic disorder that predisposes them to cancer, scientists reported yesterday. Scientists from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis tracked children born with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome and found that an unusually large percentage were conceived by IVF. In the United States, fewer than 1 percent of all births were due to in-vitro. But when doctors tracked 63 children born with the genetic disorder - babies who were entered into a Beckwith-Wiedemann registry after June 2001 - they discovered that more than 4 percent were in-vitro babies.

There was no shortage of triplets, teddy bears or diapers at Greater Baltimore Medical Center yesterday as nearly 500 test-tube children and their proud parents returned for a reunion.Mothers reminisced as they cradled newborns in their arms. Toddlers crawled through a maze of strollers. Grinning fathers jostled elbows and held aloft their children for a Life magazine photo."You can see here that the stigma of being a test-tube baby has disappeared," said Dr. Jairo E. Garcia, director of the Women's Hospital Fertility Center, which was celebrating the birth of more than 1,000 babies through its in vitro program.

The Greater Baltimore Medical Center will soon offer couples who risk passing genetic diseases to their offspring an expanded version of in vitro fertilization that screens out unhealthy embryos before pregnancy begins.It will present an alternative to couples who do not want to make the wrenching choice faced by parents who find out about genetic deformities in the midst of pregnancies. Such couples must decide whether to abort a fetus or bring a baby to term."This will eliminate the dilemma of terminating a pregnancy," said Dr. Jairo E. Garcia, director of the hospital's fertility center.

Vitro Corp., a Rockville-based defense contractor, was awarded a Navy contract valued at $39.3 million over five years for work on a weapons system to protect ships from aircraft and rocket attack.Arthur Rossi, senior vice president of administration, said the award from the Naval Sea Systems Command is for continued work on one of Vitro's largest contracts.Mr. Rossi said the contract will not add jobs. But, if the company had lost its bid for the work, it would have had to eliminate 30 or more jobs, he said.

In the 26 years since England's Louise Brown became the first "test-tube baby," in-vitro fertilization has brought the miracle of parenthood to millions of couples worldwide. But the technology has carried a hazard, too: the heightened risk of giving birth to twins and triplets. Such births can bring added joy, but they also increase the likelihood of a child being born prematurely, sometimes with mental or physical abnormalities. Building on recent success in curbing triplets, a leading professional society is set to issue guidelines any day aimed at reducing the number of twins.

July 25 1978 Louise Joy Brown, the first "test tube baby," was born in Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

The 109th Congress, now rounding the far turn before heading into its final stretch, has been notable for voting on issues simply for effect without any expectation or urgency that they become law. Proposed constitutional issues on flag-burning and gay marriage considered by the Senate fall into this category. So, too, do House plans to soon take up measures that would prohibit the government from confiscating guns during emergencies and protect the Pledge of Allegiance from being declared unconstitutional for its "under God" phrase.

WASHINGTON - All the years of fertility drugs, low-tech intra-uterine insemination and higher-tech in vitro fertilization finally gave Pamela Madsen and her husband, Kai, exactly what they wanted: a family with two healthy children, Tyler, now 16, and Spencer, now 12. But their journey into assisted reproduction also produced something they hadn't talked about or even thought about - four surplus embryos. The embryos are still in deep freeze in a fertility center in New York, like an estimated 400,000 others across the nation that have been frozen and stored since the late 1970s.

Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones, a former professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital who, with her husband Dr. Howard W. Jones Jr., became an internationally known pioneer in the field of in vitro fertilization, died of cardiac arrest yesterday at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Virginia. She was 92. "They established the in vitro fertilization program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., that produced the first in vitro baby in the United States," Dr. Theodore A. Baramki, associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said yesterday.

WASHINGTON - Less than a year after similar legislation died in Congress, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill in both chambers yesterday that would promote embryonic stem cell research to help find cures for diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. The legislation would expand the number of stem cell lines derived from unused in vitro embryos that are available for federally funded research. Under current federal policy, only stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, are eligible for federal funds, but the bill's authors said that most of the 22 available stem cell lines have been contaminated with mouse cells and are of little use to researchers.

In the 26 years since England's Louise Brown became the first "test-tube baby," in-vitro fertilization has brought the miracle of parenthood to millions of couples worldwide. But the technology has carried a hazard, too: the heightened risk of giving birth to twins and triplets. Such births can bring added joy, but they also increase the likelihood of a child being born prematurely, sometimes with mental or physical abnormalities. Building on recent success in curbing triplets, a leading professional society is set to issue guidelines any day aimed at reducing the number of twins.

July 25 1978 Louise Joy Brown, the first "test tube baby," was born in Oldham, England; she'd been conceived through the technique of in-vitro fertilization.

In an indication of the quickening pace of economic integration between the United States and Mexico, Corning Inc. and Vitro S.A., Mexico's giant glass manufacturer, agreed yesterday to market their housewares together around the world.Pending final negotiations and approval by the directors and the governments, the partnership would create jointly owned companies in each country with combined sales of more than $800 million. The deal was valued at nearly $300 million, including a payment by Vitro to Corning of more than $130 million.

Rene Danford has a message for her in vitro fertilized babies, and she has told it to them many times: "You are special. A doctor helped create you." Whether to tell her children about their origins was never really a question for Danford or her husband. And she saw no reason to wait until they were grown. Practically from Day 1, she started a conversation she planned on sharing with them for many years to come. "I spent $45,000 to get success and had to fly across the country. You're darn right I'm going to tell them," says Danford, 38, a New Orleans mother of two in vitro fertilized babies, now ages 1 and 3. "I'm very proud of this.

Babies conceived by in-vitro fertilization may be at increased risk for a rare genetic disorder that predisposes them to cancer, scientists reported yesterday. Scientists from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis tracked children born with Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome and found that an unusually large percentage were conceived by IVF. In the United States, fewer than 1 percent of all births were due to in-vitro. But when doctors tracked 63 children born with the genetic disorder - babies who were entered into a Beckwith-Wiedemann registry after June 2001 - they discovered that more than 4 percent were in-vitro babies.