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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: 3, Interesting) by similar_name on Friday February 28 2014, @06:39PM
That is well put and I agree with the sentiment. I just think it will become tricky to define what is advantageous and what the expected environment will be.
Personally, I think we'll do designer genes eventually. That makes me wonder. At one point, geographical barriers separated humans and created some differences. Today, those barriers are easily overcome and it is likely our genome is not diverging as much as it used to. As we begin to tinker with our genetics, not only will different countries adopt this technology at different rates but they will use it in different ways.
An entire generation could introduce a new eye color to the genome in one fail swoop. An eye color here, hair there. A little height here, torso there. Oh, they have purple eyes, they must be American. I wonder if we'll see our genome diverge a little. It's always good to have variety and our species may take evolution up a notch.