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from the Kwisatz-Haderach-breeding-program dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
The US Food and Drug Administration is holding hearings to help determine if they should allow oocyte modification of mitochondrial DNA, which could prevent hereditary diseases that cause issues, such as such as seizures and blindness, from being passed on by mothers. In layman's terms, this "three-parent IVF" would allow the mitochondrial DNA of an unaffected woman to replace that of the mother while keeping the main DNA, so the child would still look like the mother and father.
From Scientific American: "Once the mtDNA has been swapped out, the egg could be fertilized in the lab by the father's sperm and the embryo would be implanted back into mom where pregnancy would proceed. The resulting child would be the genetic offspring of the intended mother but would carry healthy mitochondrial genes from the donor."
The New York Times has a shorter version of the story, as well as an opinion column urging ethical and moral consideration of this procedure.
Is this an ethical way to prevent future harm, or the start of a slippery slope to designer babies? Is the creation of designer babies immoral?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by amblivious on Friday February 28 2014, @07:38AM
Yes, like how sickle hemoglobin protects against malaria [sciencedaily.com].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday February 28 2014, @02:09PM
Yes, good example. That's why we should go slowly, and start with the 'low-hanging fruit' - i.e. situations where we are sufficiently confident of no unintended consequences. (Such as the disease [wikipedia.org] being discussed here.) We should only move onto the more difficult issues that we are currently less sure about (such as trying to prevent sickle hemoglobin without increasing malaria risk) at a later stage - e.g. a few centuries from now.
This slow pace is why we should get started sooner rather than later.
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All that said, ultimately, if we genuinely believe an intervention has a 51% chance of doing good and a 49% chance of doing harm, how can it be ethical not to do the intervention? (Obviously this is a highly simplified way of putting it, but I hope people get the fundamental point I'm trying to make.)