Move is afoot to legalize the third-party parenting for people with hereditary defect.
Would it not be a better idea, to have artificial insemination or Surrogate Mother once the Tests of the parent is known?
The Moral dilemma to go in for the procedure will remain as it is now with Invitro fertilisation.
Story:
Members of the public are being asked whether families with a genetic risk of incurable conditions like muscular dystrophy should be allowed to use the DNA of a third party to create healthy children.
Although the resulting babies would inherit a small fraction of their DNA from the donor and not their mother or father, the procedure would spare all future generations from a host of rare and debilitating conditions.
The technique is currently forbidden as a treatment, but a public consultation launched today will help inform a decision by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, on whether the clinical benefits outweigh any ethical concerns.
Experts accept the technique, which involves genetically modifying a human egg or embryo, enters “unchartered territory” and raises serious ethical questions.
As well as the moral implications of engineering embryos, there are questions over how the procedure would impact on a child’s sense of identity and whether they should be allowed to contact the donor later in life…..
An estimated one in 200 children born in Britain each year is thought to have some form of mitochondrial disease, with defects in anywhere between a handful and 90 per cent of their mitochondria.
In the vast majority of cases, where the number of defects is low, there are no symptoms and the condition is never even diagnosed.
But in about one in 6,500 people the level of damage causes the development of severe medical conditions including muscular dystrophy and ataxia, a neurological condition affecting balance, coordination and speech.
About 99.8 per cent of our DNA, including all our visible characteristics, is contained in the cell nucleus and is passed down from our father and mother in equal measure.
But a small fraction consisting of 37 genes is located in the mitochondria, the tiny structures which supply power to cells, and is inherited solely from the maternal side.
The new technique, being developed by researchers at Newcastle University, is designed to tackle a range of genetic conditions passed to children by their mothers through mutations in these genes.
The mutations can cause cells to malfunction or fail completely, resulting in complications which are especially severe in parts of the body which use the most energy – the brain, heart and muscles.
By removing the nucleus from a woman’s egg before fertilisation and implanting it into a donor egg which has had the nucleus removed, and then using the egg in traditional IVF, doctors could cut damaged mitochondria out of the family line.
A similar technique could be used on an embryo by removing the nuclear DNA from the mother’s egg and father’s sperm and implanting them into a healthy donor embryo with its nuclear DNA removed.’
..
Researchers have secured £6m in funding to develop the groundbreaking treatment which could prevent genetic conditions affecting the heart, muscle or brain being passed on to children and future generations.
But the method is controversial because it involves transferring the parents’ DNA into a donor egg, meaning the resulting child would inherit a tiny fraction of their genetic coding from a third party.
Regulations currently forbid scientists from implanting such eggs into patients….
You must be logged in to post a comment.