Should Three People be Allowed to Make a Baby?
By Arielle Duhaime-Ross,
Verge
| 06. 12. 2014
Untitled Document
For more than a decade, scientists have been developing a fertility technique that involves combining DNA from three parents to make a child. The technique, which has yet to be tested on humans, aims to help women who suffer from mitochondrial disease conceive a baby to which they are genetically related. But as the science inches closer to the human trial stage — some say that might happen in as little as two years — the scientific debate surrounding "three-parent babies" grows louder, and more polarized.
Just last week, for instance, a British scientific panel decided that the fertility technique is "not unsafe" for patients who suffer from mitochondrial disease. The decision hints that British government may soon amend legislation that currently bars the procedure, called mitochondrial replacement (MR), from entering human trials. Yet an American scientific panel reached a different conclusion in February when it decided that the science supporting MR was inconclusive and lacking. Thus, the first baby with three genetic parents will likely be British, and the two countries that are seriously considering...
Related Articles
By Eric Schmidt, TIME | 04.16.2024
Imagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. Meat is lab-grown; enhanced nutrient grains are climate-resistant. This is what the future could...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Carey Gillan, UnSpun | 03.18.2024
A Mexican standoff with the United States turned into a Mexican smack-down this month with the release of Mexico’s formal rebuttal to US efforts to overturn limits Mexico has ordered on the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and the...
By Billy Perrigo, TIME | 03.11.2024
The U.S. government must move “quickly and decisively” to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an “extinction-level threat to the human species,” says a report commissioned by the U.S...