A Public consultation has been launched that could give the go-ahead for three-parent IVF babies.
The technique comes with the aim to stop debilitating hereditary illnesses passing from mother to child. However, as the side effects are yet unknown critics have labelled it ‘Frankenscience’ with some fearful it could lead to the eventual market of ‘designer babies’.
The technique would involve the defective DNA in the natural mother’s egg to be replaced with material from a donor egg. The genetic material will come from three different sources- the mother, father and donor- resulting in the foetus effectively having three biological parents.
This new form of IVF is in development to prevent ‘mitochondrial diseases’. Approximately one in 200 children (6500 babies) are born with faulty mitochondria every year. Mitochondria are ‘tiny power stations’ that provide energy to every cell in the body. Although most cases show little or no symptoms, the severest cases see bodily cells suffer a starvation of energy, the treatment could thus prevent around 50 genetic diseases, including kidney and live disease, blindness, strokes, dementia, heart failure, as well as premature death.
The basis of the treatment is to replace the mitochondria that are passed from the mother’s egg to the child- it is not passed down via the father’s sperm. The material from the donor egg is thus used to add healthy mitochondria, eliminating the disease from the child as well as future generations.
A consultation which has been requested by UK government and run by fertility regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) found that there was a ‘general support’ from the public for this IVF to be used in clinics.
The chair of the HFEA, Professor Lisa Jardine, said: “It is genetic modification of the egg that is unchartered territory. Once we have genetic modification we have to be sure we are damn happy”. She added it was a case of “balancing the desire to help families have healthy children with the possible impact on the children themselves and wider society”.
Although it cannot be absolutely ensured until a child is born, scientists have told the HFEA that there was nothing to indicate the technique was unsafe. However, some questions have been raised over the ethics of using the technique such as how children born through this procedure would feel, the effects on the parents, and feelings of donor women.
More concerned with the wider future implications of the procedure, Dr. David King of pressure group Human Genetics Alert, said that mitochondria replacement would “lead inexorably to the disaster of genetically engineered babies and consumer genetics”.
The consultation will run until 7 December this year and the conclusions are planned to be presented to ministers next spring.
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