US Experts In Favour Of
The only catch is they've all got to be boys...
A panel of experts in the United States has advised the government to approve an IVF technique that would give babies three parents rather than two. It would mean that the babies born of this procedure would carry genetic material from all three parents.
The procedure is controversial, as many see it as facilitating non-traditional family set-ups, but it actually has very little to do with this.
The treatment is designed to prevent mothers with mitochondrial disease from passing it on to their children.
Mitochondrial disease is ahereditary disease that can cause debilitating physical and cognitive disabilities.
Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT) would implant the "healthy" mitochondria from a female donor into a mother's egg and then fertilise with the father's sperm as usual.
The only catch is that the babies have to be boys. Due to the fact that it can only be passed on through the female line, the US experts have advised that only viable male foetuses should be used.
The reasoning behind this is that men don't pass on mitochondria to their offspring, therefore the genetically modified mitochondria would not perpetuate through the family line. Researchers in the UK, however, think that this somewhat "defeats the point."
In the UK, the technique was approved for both males and females in early 2015.
Although the implications for a child growing up with donor mitochondria are unclear at the moment, it is hoped that this could be a major step in curing mItochondrial disease for good.
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