Authorities in the United Kingdom have given the go-ahead for mitochondrial replacement therapy, a new type of assisted reproduction that could allow some families to avoid passing on genetic disease.
The technique is controversial because it combines genetic material from three people: two eggs and one sperm. The decision, announced Thursday, has been widely anticipated. It comes after years of debate and a change in the country’s laws passed by Parliament in 2015.
In Australia, at least 60 babies are born each year suffer with severe and life-threatening forms of mitochondrial disease, which condition starves major organs of energy.
Experts believe that by using the mother’s and father’s nuclear DNA, and replacing the mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy mitochondrial DNA from a donor egg, this could be avoided.
“This plan sound like a good idea, but there could be very grave consequences. This procedure is unethical, unproven, dangerous and unnecessary. If legalised this takes us across a massive ethical threshold. It allows the design and manufacture of a human being with certain properties and to that extent constitutes a ‘designer baby’.” Nola Leach, Chief Executive of CARE told the Christian Post Friday.
She adds; “The doubts arising from this central ethical difficulty are further compounded by recognition of the limits of what actually results from the three-parent children process. It is important to remember that the process does not cure anyone. It simply makes it possible to have a child that does not have human mitochondrial disease – but that option is open anyway through the use of a donor egg.”
Nola emphasizes that the technology poses significant health risks to future generations as the procedures have not yet been shown to work safely in humans.
“For example, when the Newcastle team did their initial research they found that one in five stem cell lines derived from the embryos they created showed an increase in the mitochondria DNA carried over. This highlights that the technique may even fail to vanish mutant mitochondria, which makes this whole exercise ineffective.” She says.
“It is also dangerous because there is no research into how this technique will affect the embryo as it develops into a child – it risks the possibility of creating a whole new set of problems. Moreover, the resulting DNA will be passed down to future generations so there are intergenerational links which raise alarming possibilities.”
She additionally urges that this technology would undermine the sense of identity of future generations and mark the intrusion of a third party in the reproductive exclusivity of a couple.
aaron@ugchristiannews.com
