SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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) by mojo chan on Friday February 28 2014, @01:51PM
It's not without health implications though, and the question remains as to where you draw the line. In the UK pregnancies have been terminated because the child had a hair lip, a purely cosmetic issue. How about colour blindness? Dyslexia?
What will happen is that the state will offer screening for serious conditions, but anything else more debatable will require private tests and treatment to correct.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by sbgen on Friday February 28 2014, @08:17PM
May be you would like to know that right now screening offered by the government is limited to just a few serious conditions AND it excludes many more serious ones. So there is no danger of screening for cosmetic aspects being offered.
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.