New Three-Parent Baby Law ‘is Flawed and Open to Challenge’, says Senior Lawyer
By Steve Connor,
The Independent [UK]
| 01. 14. 2015
Untitled Document
The Government’s attempt to legalise so-called “three parent” babies is open to challenge by judicial review because of serious flaws in the proposed legislation, a senior lawyer has warned.
Legislation to allow mitochondrial donation is either unnecessary or invalid under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, according to international law expert Lord Brennan QC.
The written opinion, which has been passed to parliamentary authorities, says there are “significant doubts” about the legality of proposed regulations being introduced by the Department of Health.
Lord Brennan states: “If the regulations are approved in their current form, they may be open to challenge by way of judicial review.”
The Government has introduced new regulations to allow mitochondrial donation – where genetic material of two women’s eggs is merged with a man’s sperm, to ensure women with mitochondrial defects do not pass on mutations to their children – because it was thought that the controversial IVF technique was specifically banned under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008.
The Act defines a “permitted” egg or embryo as one whose “nuclear or mitochondrial...
Related Articles
By Antonio Regalado, MIT Technology Review | 03.20.2024
There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime.
Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic...
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 03.10.2024
In 1889, a French doctor named Francois-Gilbert Viault climbed down from a mountain in the Andes, drew blood from his arm and inspected it under a microscope. Dr. Viault’s red blood cells, which ferry oxygen, had surged 42 percent. He...
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...
By Gerry Smith, Bloomberg | 03.12.2024
When Celenise Mahmood first learned about two new gene therapies that could cure sickle cell disease, she felt a wave of relief.
Her 9-year-old son, Navid, has the inherited blood disorder. By age 5, he’d had over 30 life-saving blood...