The UK's fertility watchdog has approved the procedure
by Rebecca Coulson / December 28, 2016 / Leave a comment
“[T]he fact is, society seems already to have accepted, or allowed itself to be persuaded by men in white coats, that making children in labs, flushing unwanted ones down the sink, and experimenting on embryos as if they were just more cell cultures, is all ethically A-OK. It’s not A-OK for myself and many other people, but it would be hypocritical or arbitrary for those who have accepted everything thus far to start twitching the curtains over so-called ‘three parent’ babies”—David Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading
Two weeks ago, UK independent regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), approved “the use of mitochondrial donation in certain, specific cases,” allowing fertility clinics to apply for licenses to provide two forms of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT). This will be welcome news to women who are aware that, owing to their genetic makeup, any child they conceive could likely suffer from life-threatening mitochondrial diseases. Regulations permitting these treatments—which use in vitro fertilisation, but, as well as involving an egg and sperm from the child’s two biological parents, incorporate part of a second woman’s egg to prevent the child inheriting its mother’s mitochondrial DNA—were passed by parliament last year. The HFEA ruling means that the first children conceived this way could be born in 2017.
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