Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday January 22 2017, @04:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the family-trees-just-got-more-confusing dept.

Ethicists are bothered by the circumstances surrounding the world's first use of pronuclear transfer to create a baby:

It was a first for the entire world: Using a controversial in vitro fertilization technique, doctors in Kiev, Ukraine, helped a previously infertile couple conceive and deliver a baby girl. Some critics say, for genetic reasons, the use of this IVF method should have been restricted to producing a baby boy. The baby was born on January 5, the result of an experimental technique known as "pronuclear transfer" and sometimes referred to as three-parent IVF. The 34-year-old Ukrainian mother suffered from "unexplained infertility," according to Dr. Valery Zukin, director of the Nadiya Clinic for Reproductive Medicine, where the controversial pronuclear transfer technique was performed. She did not have mitochondrial disease.

[...] The reason this experimental method is a cause for concern -- and was vigorously debated in the UK before approval -- is the genetic modifications produced in a girl baby could be passed onto her children, according to Lori P. Knowles, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Alberta School of Public Health.

Boy babies carrying donor mitochondria cannot pass their modified genetics onto any future children they may have because once a sperm fuses with an egg to form an embryo, the masculine mitochondrion withers and dies leaving the resulting embryo with only mitochondrion from the mother's egg. "I do think it's highly significant that this is a girl because we know for sure that she will be passing on her mitochondrial DNA through her maternal line," said Knowles. If in the future this baby girl has genetic children, they will inherit her genetic modifications "and that's always been a really bright line," said Knowles -- a line not to be crossed until rigorous scientific testing proves it is safe.

The previous three-parent baby was conceived using spindle nuclear transfer, and couldn't pass on donor mitochondrial DNA (well, conventionally anyway) as a male. The Ukrainian procedure was used as a workaround for infertility rather than mitochondrial disease. The article also notes that Dr. Valery Zukin, director of the Nadiya Clinic for Reproductive Medicine where the procedure was performed, is also the vice president of the medical review board that approved the procedure.

Also at BBC and Smithsonian Magazine:

The mother in question had been unable to get pregnant for 15 years. Using the procedure as an IVF technique allows doctors to bypass cells or enzymes in the mother's egg that might prevent pregnancy or hinder cell division, explains Andy Coghlan at New Scientist .

Previously: Mitochondrial DNA Manipulation and Ethics
Approval for Three-Parent Embryo Trials
Fatal Genetic Conditions Could Return in Some 'Three-Parent' Babies


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.