Its official- United Kingdom is the first country in the world to allow three parent babies. In other words, three people are involved in creating one child. This technique involves altering the egg or embryo before transferring it into the mother. By using the donated DNA from a third party, it will eliminate risk of genetic disorders that parents might pass on.
Legalizing this procedure will specifically help women with mitochondrial diseases. Muscular dystrophy, heart, lung and liver failure are just some of complications having a defective mitochondria inflicts on these individuals.
The donated DNA that is used is the mitochondria of a healthy female donor. Mitochondria (aka. the power houses of the cell) converts food into energy. Through in-vitro fertilization the DNA of two parents are combined with the mitochondria of the female donor.
It is important to note that this procedure will only be used sparingly on women who have defective mitochondria.
The Process:
Two eggs (one egg from the mother and the other from the healthy female donor) are fertilized with the father's sperm at the egg/embryo stage. The parents genetic information is inserted into the donor's embryo which has everything except for the mitochondria.The second method is to use the nucleus of a mothers egg cell which will be placed directly into a donor egg, replacing the original nucleus.
Therefore, the resulting embryo would have nucleus from its parents and mitochondria from the donor. The donor DNA is said to contribute less than 1 percent to embryo's genes.
Ethical Concerns:
It's techniques cross a fundamental scientific boundary as the changes performed on the embryo will be passed on to it's future generations.
From an evolutionary standpoint, we as a species will become dependent on such procedures and technology to reproduce and survive. This will greatly affect the natural process of evolution in eliminating negative mutations throughout generations. Although every species at one point will become extinct, it is possible that this may lead to a premature extinction of our species.
"Think about bone marrow transplants,"Peter Braude, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Kings College London, told the BBC. "Let's say unfortunately you have leukemia and you have to have your bone marrow radiated for the cancer to be killed and then it is replaced by bone marrow from someone else - say me. Effectively from that time onwards, you will have circulating in your body DNA from me. You won't be related to me, you may be grateful to me, but you will have DNA from a third person circulating in your body."(A)
This procedure is an incredible leap for science and proves that scientists worldwide are working hard to create the possibility of a better/ healthier life for us all. But at what cost?
The destruction of the human embryo as part of the process of creating three parent babies- is it worth it? Would you love your child any less if he or she did not have a defective mitochondria? If both parents have come to the agreement that maybe caring for a child with possible muscular dystrophy or organ failures will be too difficult to deal with- shouldn't adoption be the next reasonable option?
There are many children in the world suffering from hunger and diseases who are left to fend for themselves without parents and often times without hope.
What has happened to the human existence where our ego pushes us to creating the perfect children? When you claim a child as your own (adopted, biological, etc) he or she IS the perfect child because they are yours. That kind of connection between parent and child creates the purest form of love- unconditional love.
We have no idea what kinds of effects (i.e. genetic mutations, diseases, defects, etc) these procedures will have on these scientifically engineered babies in the future.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a meeting to discuss the techniques and scientists warned it could take decades to determine if they are safe. Experts say the techniques are likely being used elsewhere, such as in China and Japan, but are mostly unregulated. (C)
Lisa Jardine, who chaired a review into the techniques conducted by Britain's fertility regulator, said each case will be under close scrutiny and that doctors will track children born using this technique as well as their future offspring. She acknowledged there was still uncertainty about the safety of the novel techniques. (C)
Ultimately, going against mother nature through designing babies is very dangerous step because there is still so much we do not know or understand. It will be unfortunate to bring a child into this world hoping for a pain free healthy life only to have them develop a new unknown more painful untreatable disease. There is no such thing as a 'perfect' human and if we continue to pursue this ridiculous notion we will continually be let down.
