UK Government Backs Three-Person IVF 132
Dupple writes "The U.K. looks set to become the first country to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people, after the government backed the in vitro fertilization technique. It will produce draft regulations later this year and the procedure could be offered within two years. Experts say three-person IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child. Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a 'slippery slope.' They also argue that affected couples could adopt or use egg donors instead. Mitochondria are the tiny, biological 'power stations' that give the body energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child. Defective mitochondria affect one in every 6,500 babies. This can leave them starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and death in the most extreme cases."
Re:easy non-controversial fix (Score:2, Informative)
If it's so controversial, why not just get the mitochondrial dna from the father?
Because it's not easy. This method (see article) uses an egg from one women, an egg nucleus from another women and sperm from a man. If you can get the father to produce an egg then you're easy non-controversial fix just might work.
Re:I don't mind (Score:5, Informative)
there are many, many desperate children that feel so hopeless and lonely right now in some orphanage
Adoption in many countries is very difficult, and plenty of potential parents do not qualify. My wife and I are financially secure, and are very successfully raising two of our own kids. But we had room in our home and our hearts for at least one more, and looked into adoption. We were turned down. The reasons given were that we were too old (I am in my 50s and my wife is in her 40s), and we already have kids of our own, and childless couples would be given priority.
If there really are orphanages full of desperate children, then governments are doing an incredibly poor job of matching them up with willing and capable parents.
Sensational headlines: A little perspective here. (Score:5, Informative)
How many chromosones to bake up a new baby?
What the article fails to mention, is that the mitochondrial genome contributed by the "3rd parent" is about 16,600 bp in size, or less than 0.00052% of the total human genome.
Re:Children of lesbian couples? (Score:2, Informative)
Replacing mitochondria (Score:4, Informative)
The reason is that the nucleus of a cell is relatively huge. Mitochondria are 'almost' independent living cells wholly contained within our cells, and each has it's own DNA. But they're small compared to the nucleus.
Roughly speaking, it'd be like the difference between removing the pit of a cherry vs trying to remove every seed out of a watermelon the size of a cherry.