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posted by Cactus on Friday February 28 2014, @02:00AM   Printer-friendly
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?

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday February 28 2014, @03:11PM

    by Open4D (371) on Friday February 28 2014, @03:11PM (#8530) Journal

    More diversity always leads to better chances of survival.

    I take your point, although I think the story we are discussing proves that it is not an absolute. It's difficult to see how the diversity represented by faulty mitochondrial DNA (and an early death [bbc.com]) could ever realistically be a good thing.

    But yes, any treatments like this should be highly focussed, and only reduce genetic diversity where necessary. Perhaps they should seek approaches that work by engineering increased genetic diversity wherever possible? (Different treatments for the same disease or something?)

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