Free Republic

Great Britain has voted to allow the world’s first “three-parent” in vitro fertilization. The new technique uses the DNA of three people to prevent mothers from passing mitochondrial diseases on to their baby. The new treatment that was allowed by the British Parliament on Tuesday is known as “three-parent” in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor. In Britain’s House of Commons on Tuesday, health minister Jane Ellison started the debate on mitochondrial donation by urging support for this change. “This is a...

A fertility treatment which eliminates hereditary disease by engineering babies to carry healthy DNA from a third biological parent could be legalised next year. Members of the public are being asked whether families with a genetic risk of incurable conditions like muscular dystrophy should be allowed to use the DNA of a third party to create healthy children. Although the resulting babies would inherit a small fraction of their DNA from the donor and not their mother or father, the procedure would spare all future generations from a host of rare and debilitating conditions. The technique is currently forbidden as...