British MPs Approve 3-Parent Babies 199
An anonymous reader writes: A vote of 382-128 in the UK's House of Commons gave approval for a procedure that allows the creation of babies using DNA from three parents. If the measure passes the House of Lords and gets licensed by the fertility regulator, the UK would be the first country to allow such genetic engineering. The medical procedure was designed to help conception when genetic diseases could be passed through mitochondrial DNA. A child inherits mitochondria only from its mother, and these mitochondria have their own DNA, which doesn't affect things like the child's appearance.
The purpose of the procedure is to replace the mother's mitochondria, and that can happen in two different ways. In one method, doctors take eggs from the mother and from a donor, removing the nucleus of both. The mother's nucleus is then implanted in the donor's egg, which can then be fertilized by the father's sperm. The other method is similar, but both eggs are fertilized before the nucleus swap takes place.
There has been lively debate about this issue, with critics raising ethical concerns and questioning the procedure's success rate. They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children. Proponents point out that less than 0.1% of the child's DNA will come from the donor, and it won't affect anything other than the child's health.
The purpose of the procedure is to replace the mother's mitochondria, and that can happen in two different ways. In one method, doctors take eggs from the mother and from a donor, removing the nucleus of both. The mother's nucleus is then implanted in the donor's egg, which can then be fertilized by the father's sperm. The other method is similar, but both eggs are fertilized before the nucleus swap takes place.
There has been lively debate about this issue, with critics raising ethical concerns and questioning the procedure's success rate. They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children. Proponents point out that less than 0.1% of the child's DNA will come from the donor, and it won't affect anything other than the child's health.
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The only way I can see this passing so quickly in Britain is if one of the (horribly inbred) royal families is affected. How common are mRNA diseases?
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No, nor was I home schooled. I'm rather wondering what prompted that post.
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"...other than the child's health" (Score:3)
Re:"...other than the child's health" (Score:5, Insightful)
child custody in a divorce? i don't know. might even be some BAD health things.
Do you think the donors of kidneys or stem cells should also have custody rights over their recipients? If not, why should the donors of mitochondria be treated any differently?
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Already happened in the U.S. -- http://abcnews.go.com/Health/k... [go.com] and http://cjonline.com/news/2014-... [cjonline.com] and many others... In this case, it is sperm donor and it is the 'State' law...
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Re:"...other than the child's health" (Score:5, Insightful)
And the law is so written to stop guys having sex, creating babies then denying any responsibility. Hence the requirement that the donation be under the supervision of a doctor.
I'm not sure what the concern here is, unless the suggestion is that three people will come together in a back room without a doctor, privately switch out the mitochondrial DNA in the woman's egg and then fertilize the egg.
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IIRC, this was a case of doing it without going through the right legal procedures. Normally, the government assumes that the genetic parents are, in fact, parents. There are ways to remove this responsibility from a sperm donor (and presumably an egg donor), but they do have to be done right.
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They're organelles.
As it happens, the analogy to organ donation is pretty accurate as far as soundbites go. They're just smaller and more distributed.
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child custody in a divorce?
DNA is usually not a consideration in custody decisions. Adoptive parents generally have the same rights as biological parents.
i don't know. might even be some BAD health things.
That is not a decision for politicians to make.
Re:"...other than the child's health" (Score:5, Insightful)
DNA is usually not a consideration in custody decisions.
I disagree. Possession of a second X chromosome tends to be a big advantage.
Re:"...other than the child's health" (Score:4, Funny)
Possession of a second X chromosome tends to be a big advantage.
Then people with a 3rd X chromosome [wikipedia.org] should have an even bigger advantage.
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Or just grow up and join the future.
first country to allow? (Score:3)
The UK is now set to become the first country to introduce laws to allow the creation of babies from three people.
Surely it's only not allowed when there was a law disallowing it? Which law was that? Are there other countries that would need a new law to allow it?
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http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/genetherapy/gtsuccess/ [utah.edu]
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the moratorium is on creating viable embryos through genetic manipulation and selection. Sorry, I don't have a citation for you.
Re:first country to allow? (Score:5, Informative)
You can typically get creative with techniques and drugs that are already approved for some other purpose; but bringing a procedure or drug into the fold in the first place typically requires either that it be grandfathered in through age, or go through some sort of approval.
Re:first country to allow? (Score:5, Informative)
I may be wrong here but I think it was the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 [wikipedia.org]. If I've read it right it essentially bans labwork with embryos without a license for a very specific task, and to date they wouldn't have granted a license for this kind of procedure.
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that's the one ^^ I was referring to in my other comment in this thread. It allows stem cell research for practically any kind of human genetic research but it specifically bans the creation of viable embryos using specified genetic manipulation.
Three parents? (Score:4, Funny)
Hell, I'd be surprised if Texas legislators don't respond by going to five parents.
Slippery Slope (Score:2)
They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children
I sure hope so. Where is my star trek future?
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When we go to space there are several necessary adaptations which would take far to long to arise naturally. First and foremost would be increased radiation resistance. Next would be to have the bones maintain their strength rather than dumping their calcium if they're not stressed. Mobility adaptations would be good, spacial orientation improvements, a lot of other minor changes would be useful but would take centuries to arise naturally. And wouldn't it be cool to have a prehensile tail?
I can see a sp
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increased radiation resistance
Keep on dreaming.
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radiation resistance: the skin. Stops or inhibits most types of harmful radiation, can even utilise some part of the EM spectrum (UV to create Vitamin D3). What the skin can't take care of, usually the capsule does quite adequately. And if you inhale or ingest a radiological source, no amount of radiation hardening is going to help you.
Mineralisation: As I said, a UV source helps here. Add a calcium supplement if necessary, and an exercise regime and you can stay in a microgravity environment for MONTHS.
The
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MONTHS
A colonist needs to live there for years, that's what I meant by "go to space". And of course we don't know what the side effects are going to be. We won't until someone actually tries them, just the same as new pharmaceuticals and pesticides. And before you object that people will die, yes, I agree, some people will. People died colonizing every scrap of land on Earth, colonizing space will not be different.
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rich Corinthian leather.
Re:Slippery Slope (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, no. It's 2.0001 parent babies (Score:5, Informative)
Since this story has been around for a couple of days I would have hoped slashdot would know better and have avoided the sensationalist headline. Here's what the experts say.
The biggest problem is that this has been described as three-parent IVF. In fact it is 2.001-parent IVF," Gillian Lockwood, a reproductive ethicist, told the BBC. "Less than a tenth of one per cent of the genome is actually going to be affected. It is not part of what makes us genetically who we are. It doesn't affect height, eye colour, intelligence, musicality. It simply allows the batteries to work properly."
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By that argument we have 1 parent babies (Score:2)
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Please let's not start fighting ignorance with stupidity.
Of if we do, please televise the battles so that people can choose which side they belong to.
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Just wait a while, it's coming. The only think to be settled is how many will involve Nigel Farage.
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Yes, but it's really going to mess things up for future genealogists that use things like familytreedna.com if this kind of procedure isn't documented.
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Nobody cares what the source of their mitochondria is. It would be like changing a family tree every time you had a kidney transplant, or a blood transfusion.
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Or a really good dump.
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It doesn't affect height, eye colour, intelligence, musicality. It simply allows the batteries to work properly.
Great - I'll choose Usain Bolt's mum's mitochondria then. As for intelligence, I must have been asleep the day the great nature vs. nurture debate was finally resolved on that point, and even if my kids don't grow up to be 7' I'm pretty sure that improved "batteries" will be good for the development of bones, muscles and brain (and the inclination to use them). Musicality... well, it depends on whether they want to play the triangle or the trumpet, really.
You know, I'm broadly behind this idea and it seem
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the placental barrier (a simple selectively perrmeable membrane but mechanically extremely complex) prevents anything the size of a DNA strand from passing to the fetus. By comparison, a molecule of D-glucose is miniscule. A surrogate mother only provides a warm wet environment and all the nutrients a fetus can absorb, the genetic makeup of the fetus is already established and fixed.
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Don't worry, it won't have any effect on whether you're a pedantic aspie shitcock. That's all in the nucleus.
Want to replace all of my mitochondria from birds! (Score:2)
Bird mitochondria are super efficient at processing energy. I have energy problems, so this would really be a boost for me.
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Side effects include eating like a bird. Contrary to popular belief, what this means is throwing all your food up in the air, putting it in your hair and letting it fall out again before picking it up again and eating it...
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You say that like it's a bad thing.
South Park Time (Score:4, Funny)
There was a movie about this, (Score:2)
and the result was unexpected Twins [dailymotion.com].
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I thought the link was going to be for Basket Case.
Never mind.
"Fertility Regulator" . . . ? (Score:2)
If the measure passes the House of Lords and gets licensed by the fertility regulator
To anyone who has seen the film "The Missouri Breaks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org] . . . the term "regulator" has a special meaning.
I am seriously considering adding that title to my email footer . . . "Certified Fertility Regulator" . . . although, that is NOT what you may think at first . . . watch the movie!
Repulsive quality of argument... (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what, kids, there have been precious few medically relevant developments, ever, that came without some human risk. This doesn't imply endorsement of the Josef Mengele protocol for experimental ethics, it's just a fact that we've (so far, I'm all for somebody who can improve this) been unable to avoid, and even the most by-the-book-and-informed-consent contemporary clinical trials are subject to it to some degree. We can't exactly know if it's actually fully safe and effective in humans by use of animal models and pure reason.
Perhaps more importantly, this is a technique to treat disorders that cause grievous impairment and/or early, unpleasant, death. It has long been a commonplace of medical ethics(and simple commonsense decision making) that you don't want a cure worse than the disease; but that nasty diseases can have cures that you would welcome compared to that disease; but would be horrified by in the context of a less serious one(eg. basically all cancer treatment and most surgery). You calibrate your sense of risk based on what the alternatives are, not based on Ideal Perfect Risk Free. In the case of mitochondrial defects, the alternatives suck.
Finally, if you don't wish to allow treatment of mitochondrial defects(effective treatment, that is, there are various, mostly symptom-easing, treatments of not terribly impressive efficacy for the symptoms of mitochondrial disorders; but only swapping out mitochondria, or advanced and aggressive genetic engineering, show much hope for a cure); what do you propose? Do mitochondrially defective would-be-mothers get to roll the dice and hope for a less-sick baby? Do we start charging them with negligent homicide if they keep spawning horribly doomed offspring even after enough failures to know that trying again is dangerously likely to condemn their child to an ugly and swift death?
If you are concerned about 'germline' genetic engineering, this somewhat-uncomfortably-retro 'eugenic' proposal is the other viable option to preventing mitochondrial disease; but I'm guessing that it won't be too popular.
(All that said, I hope that the treatment does work as well as its backers hope, and doesn't turn out to suffer from the drawbacks its critics fear, and if it does turn out to be too dangerous/imperfectly effective, I think that it should go back to the drawing board; but these phantoms of 'need to know for sure that it works' and 'must be proven safe' seem like disgustingly transparent rhetorical devices, not serious ethical arguments.)
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I'm pretty sure we have Thalidomide to thank for that particular attitude.
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It's perfectly possible for non-human trials to suggest that a drug or treatment should be kept well away from humans; but it's never entirely possible for a non-human trial to prove that humans won't exhibit an unexpected negative response. I'm very much in favor of paying attention to bad news from non-human trials; bu
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Thalidomide's coming back - as an antidepressant for pregnant women.
Fuck.
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An example of a poor quality argument: your thesis is that the quality of argument is poor but all of your points are about a particular position and never mention the quality of the argument for that position.
Re:Repulsive quality of argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
And what really bugs the piss out of me about that argument is that if you're really going to go by The Bible on medical care, then you should go without ANY life-saving measures that weren't developed at that time anyway.
If it's not how they did it in The Bible, you should reject it, if you're really going to be that fucking picky.
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Well by that logic, if you think things should be how they were in the 7th century you shouldn't be flying airplanes into buildings. Or using AK 47s. Or dousing people in gasoline. Or posting videos of the aforementioned things on the facetubes.
But if you say that you're a rascalismophobic, and a horrid horrid meany too.
Title's a bit histrionic, isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how the issue got the very Daily Mail headline of "3 person babies". By that same logic anyone with a donor organ is a "monster franken-hybrid of two people!".
Essentially it's a transplant (astonishingly) early in that baby's life. Kind of impressive that we could pull it off, actually. Far better that we do something medically that will terminate that line of mitochondria from being passed on to make more people miserable.
That said, the 'poster mom' for this condition Sharon Bernardi has lost SEVEN children to this condition. (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19648992) "...Each of her first three children died within hours of birth and no-one knew why....At the same time, her mother revealed that she'd had three stillbirths before Sharon had been born. Further investigations by doctors revealed that members of Sharon's extended family had lost another eight children between them."
Her 4th child survived until he was 21, living a life of dysfunction and pain;
"..."In the last year of his life Edward was in chronic pain. He had dystonic spasms caused by things going wrong in his brain. His muscles would go into spasm for up to six hours at a time. Drugs could not help him."
"...Sharon and Neil kept on trying for a healthy baby but without luck. Although three more children were born, none lived beyond the age of two. Each time one of their children died, they told themselves that "the death was a one-off". After their last child had a heart attack and died in 2000 they stopped trying...."
I'm sorry, but what the hell? How colossally selfish does someone have to be to just keep pumping out babies that die? There are at least hundreds of thousands of adoptable children *desperate* for parents to love them, your womb is so fucking sacred that you're willing to (essentially) just keep killing babies until you get one that's "of you"?
That's not the most sympathetic figure they could have picked to represent why this was needed.
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I would think by the 7th child there'd the the possibility of murder charges. Nobody can claim they haven't noticed the pattern by then.
I, for one, welcome... (Score:3)
...our new three-headed overlords.
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FTFY
Think of the Children! (Score:2)
What ethical concern ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What ethical concern ? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't even require an embryo, just an unfertilized egg cell from another woman.
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Ethical concern... parent gets to choose whether or not child is born with a condition, or cleansed of it before the egg is even fertilised.
Now if condition is "terminal cancer at an early age", okay. Down's syndrome (not relevant here, but an example that we're all familiar with)? Slightly less ethical. What about a genetic big nose? Ginger hair?
Where is the line that determines this, and does the current legal and medical ethics framework cover this particular situation?
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Eye colors other than brown are technically caused by a defective gene as well.
Personally, I think if you can alter genes to get rid of certain bad things, that child once grown would thank you for it. I would definitely thank my parents for breeding out my dad's asthma and my mom's allergies, which when combined made my mainly asthmatic reaction to cats so bad I can't even be around people that own cats without heavy medication, and even then, the sooner I get away, the better.
OK, so, a technical question... (Score:2)
There doesn't seem to be much about "donor matching" in the article. Obviously, you don't want outright defective mitochondria used. HOWEVER, it also seems to me that the mitochondrial genome works in conjunction with the nuclear genome (especially since most mitochondrial genes have, over the millennia, migrated to the nucleus), and that matching between the two is relevant. In fact, there are prominent theorists who believe p
Re:OK, so, a technical question... (Score:4, Informative)
you don't have to match donors because mitochindria haven't mutated in about a billion years. They're functionally and structurally identical now to what they were when eukaryotes first slupped their way across the mud pools. Mitochondria either work or they don't, it's a binary condition since mitochondria have but a single function: to convert chemical potential to usable forms of energy. As such, mitichondrial DNA is exclusively passed along the maternal line - because a: it doesn't need to pool multiple genotypes, and b: it makes possible monoecious or asexual reproduction (plant cloning and bee colonies). This is part of the reason why you hear about the search for "Mitochondrial Eve", the mother of mothers of the Human species.
Designer babies (Score:2)
I disagree with this. It smacks far too much of genetic engineering of humans, which I consider to be fundamentally wrong. It's barely a step above deciding to abort a fetus based solely on their genetic test results. While I realize abortion is a personal choice, that does disturb me on a fundamental level.
Some people just shouldn't have kids together. There have always been issues of blood type compatability and such to suggest people shouldn't have babies. A genetic disorder in one or both parent
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There is no shortage of kids awaiting adoption. Until all of them are adopted, I don't think any of the in vitro techniques that we have in use today should have been allowed
With that logic, why would you even allow people getting babies through regular intercourse, until all existing babies are adopted ?
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It smacks far too much of genetic engineering of humans,
But then selecting a spouse* for traits like appearance and high intelligence could be considered to be genetic engineering as well. Just like picking beta matched transistors from a production run.
*Which is what I did. In order to ensure our offspring will excel in life. My wife says it's just going to end up as regression to the mean.
Gattaca (Score:2)
Future genetic analysis and research (Score:2)
At some point in the future, genetic analysis will be messed up because the lineage fo the mtDNA is not from the same mother that gave the nuclear DNA.
Will be a serious puzzle when this is done without any accompanying documentation that person X had this done, or a marker is present to indicate it was.
Having a hard time distinguishing from eugenics (Score:2)
If you are going to manually select for better mitochondrial DNA, what's the difference between that and manually selecting every other bit of DNA.
Sure, we select DNA when we choose a mate, but when you're twiddling with it below the cellular level what's keeping people from custom babies? Allowing *just* this will permit for a race of super men, bred for their superior metabolism by simply selecting better mitochondria.
"But this is for fixing a specific disease." Sure, but that doesn't make the results a
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So glad some white upper class inbred nobles can spend money to make their precious baby.
These aren't upper class inbred nobles, and if they're spending their money on it, why shouldn't they? Or must we now have every purchase ratified to ensure it doesn't have any detriment to the world at large? Because then you could wave goodbye to a lot of luxuries.
Given the choice between them producing a string of unhealthy babies that live (in some cases) short painful lives and require round-the-clock care, and them being able to have one or two healthy kids, I'd take this any day.
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You need a license to drive a car, pilot an aircraft, and handle some hazardous chemicals, but any moron can pump out a dozen squalling brats with less consideration than society gives to having a litter of puppies.
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This the UK, so the treatment will be available to anyone who needs it, free of charge, just like IVF.
Re:Republicans heads EXPLODE (Score:5, Funny)
I've got a better, more practical line that successfully trolls both Republicans AND Democrats in one fell swoop. When you're in a chat room, any chat room, (especially chat rooms like trade chat in World of Warcraft) just say this simple line:
"I think abortion is ok so long as it's only for minorities."
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You sound like Margret Sanger.
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progressive excludes conservatives almost by default
Honestly I've always hated the term progressive. It's just a label that somebody slaps on themselves when they unilaterally believe that their ideas and only their ideas are the true way forward. Groups that have called themselves progressive in the past not only include eugenicists, but also Nazis, prohibitionists, and anybody else who has a grand vision of a future their own little utopia that is good for themselves but not necessarily for anybody else.
That, and history very often looks dis-favorably upon
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It's one of those cases where, if you're right, you're great, but if you guess wrong you wind up doing harm.
Re:Homo sapien mk2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Future historians attempting to use mitochondria to trace female ancestry genetically will curse this development(just as the ones attempting to use Y chromosomes to genetically trace male ancestry would curse a hypothetical 'Y swap' corrective procedure for X-linked genetic disease); but it's hard to see an argument for why the product of this technique would be considered anything other than human.
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Even your siblings are likely to have difference mtDNA.
Not as different as your neighbour, or your father, but different.
mtDNA is copied by an ancient strategy that we stole along with the organelles themselves. It is a bit half-arsed and screws up a LOT more often than the copier used on the rest of our DNA. Which is why we've got adult women whose kids die from mtDNA faults - their mtDNA worked OK, but the copies they're giving to the kids are busted due to a transcription error. We can't fix that (yet) b
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That's a brilliant idea. If only there was some way to conceive a child with some other mans DNA. Fortunately for researchers the techniques have not yet been developed, so they can safely investigate genetic ancestry without worry of this hypothetical 'y swap' procedure. /s
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I guess I don't get how this is a troll.
What's more important, your need to have your own children or potentially watching your child suffer horribly for your pride?
There's alarming amounts of diabetes in my family. No way would I ever wish that on any kid if I could help it.
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I realize there are problems with the adoption system, and believe me I know about prospective parents who need some serious expectation management. And yes, I am well aware that not all parents who put their kids up for adoption want to, but feel they have to as it is necessary to give the child the best life possible. That is not, however, the scenario you're describing.
Rather, I think you're reading way too much into it. GP was saying (and I agree with), if you believe that you, by virtue of having a
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And, while I'd be deeply unimpressed if this argument is used to suppress a specific fertility technique just because it's 'eww, icky!', I would be more generally supportive of questions about exactly how much money need be spent(by others, the would-be-parent can do as they wish) on attempts to engineer around the various defects that render people les
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... but GMO food is OMG DEADLY!
Mitochondrial transplants: Seems to be driven by doctors and scientists genuinely trying to help (I'm assuming that the drug companies would make more money out of sick children). Risk: A few kids are born sick, or go on to have sick children. Tragic on a personal scale, but the world doesn't end. Humans are at the top of the food chain, so its not going to fuck up the ecosystem any more than humans have already fucked it. You're only moving DNA between humans, and with a small number of people. Benef
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driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,
You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have th
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Yeah, but all the well-documented epigenetic processes I know about involve modification to the DNA strands, either structurally or chemically. The cell creates new organelles by following DNA blueprints in the nucleus or mitochondria, not by directly copying existing organelles.
So epigenetics might be relevant for this procedure, but I don't think non-genetic material provided by the egg donor is likely to be an issue.
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you'd be fucked if your mitochondria didn't work, they're the power cell for your entire organic system.
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Just wait until we get the artificial womb [vice.com] (aka ectogenesis), a controversy I've been expecting since reading about such things in futurist-lit as a teen. I imagine just the controversy over gays being able to naturally have their own kids would just be the start of it, but the upside of any kids born from such a womb always having proper nutrition and not being dependent on bad habits of the mom (like booze, so no fetal alcohol syndrome) seems a good thing. I see religious zealots never letting this become
It's Britain (Score:2)
Given their predilection for confiscating pocket knives and spying on all communications, the end goal will be "sheeple".
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Fuck this shit, Lillian Greenwood is getting a letter from me.
Be sure to use your green pen.