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UK Government Backs Three-Person IVF
Dupple writes "The U.K. looks set to become the first country to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people, after the government backed the in vitro fertilization technique. It will produce draft regulations later this year and the procedure could be offered within two years. Experts say three-person IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child. Opponents say it is unethical and could set the UK on a 'slippery slope.' They also argue that affected couples could adopt or use egg donors instead. Mitochondria are the tiny, biological 'power stations' that give the body energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child. Defective mitochondria affect one in every 6,500 babies. This can leave them starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and death in the most extreme cases."
Survey says......69!
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
We move to three biological genders: male, female, and unaffiliated.
Now they'll have more threesomes than anyone...
Zippicamiknicks for all!
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
C'mon! There's a sex joke in there somewhere! Who has one?
Unethical - adj. A word describing anything I don't like that makes me feel bad regardless of whether I have actually considered the thing in question.
If it's so controversial, why not just get the mitochondrial dna from the father?
Could this be used by lesbian couples in the future to have babies that are biological children of both parents? Obviously, such children would always be daughters, but I'm curious whether this sort of technique would help them.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
This at all, but there are many, many desperate children that feel so hopeless and lonely right now in some orphanage, that really do need someones love. I hope more people give thought to that, rather than the ever over-population of our Mother Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28mythology%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29
It has already been done. If you are unaware of this, then you know that you are not a member.
yadda yadda yadda.
Already possible? That's just two people. This is three, and would allow a lesbian couple to have a biological child with a Y chromosome lent by a third party, so they could have a son.
The technology to pick and choose single chromosomes out of one nucleus to replace a chromosome in another nucleus simply does not exist and may not for quite some time since DNA does not wrap itself up neatly into little X's until cellular division. No, the techniques involved are far cruder than that.
Similarly, the technology to combine two egg nuclei into a single, viable diploid cell also does not yet exist.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Do we REALLY have a shortage of people having kids?
no... no we dont.
if you can't have kids by the old fashioned fucking... something even the lowest forms of life manage to do..
It's not ment to be. Get over yourself and go do something useful with your life.
(squeezing out more kids isnt one of them)
The lack of caution shown in that UK government statement is just breathtaking. The politicians seem to be accepting everything that the industry lobbyists tell them without first seeking wide-ranging evidence of safety gathered over decades nor exercising any cautionary judgement of any kind.
In fact, they're following the same kind of accelerated and untested path beaten by Monsanto with GMO crops. The many horrors that GMOs have introduced are no longer a secret. Nor is the widespread lobbying and corruption that led to it a secret anymore.
Although 3-party IVF is not the same thing as GMO crops, nevertheless it is a form of genetic manipulation and it produces new gene combinations. Our level of understanding of the effects of genetic engineering is far too primitive to be doing experiments on humans at this stage. We can't even do it safely with much simpler organisms, and we have failed dismally to predict how they interact with other life in the biosphere of which are are part.
This is unjustified wishful thinking about our level of scientific competence and experience. The human population should not be treated as a test tube. This is an area where caution is a very good thing, and accepting commercial advice is very unwise.
How many chromosones to bake up a new baby?
What the article fails to mention, is that the mitochondrial genome contributed by the "3rd parent" is about 16,600 bp in size, or less than 0.00052% of the total human genome.
Does anybody have a plausible guess about what, exactly, the 'slippery slope' is supposed to be leading ominously and inevitably toward?
Not all 'slippery slope' arguments are nonsense, by any means; but I'd be a lot more convinced by this one if I had some idea about the alleged topography of the area around the slope. Are there monkey-men at the bottom? clone Hitler armies? The kwisatz haderach?
"Mitochondria are the tiny, biological 'power stations' that give the body energy."
Aren't those called Midi-chlorians?
The reason is that the nucleus of a cell is relatively huge. Mitochondria are 'almost' independent living cells wholly contained within our cells, and each has it's own DNA. But they're small compared to the nucleus.
Roughly speaking, it'd be like the difference between removing the pit of a cherry vs trying to remove every seed out of a watermelon the size of a cherry.
I don't read AC A human right
It's shameful to waste resources on this when the same money could've been used to help increase the adoption rate and to sponsor adoptions. There are children already alive who need parents, no need to make more.
I just don't understand these poor sad people who are so self-obsessed that they think they can only love a child that carries their own DNA.
I guess I'm still stuck asking why?
OK, so you've had your genome sequenced (or whatever) and determined there might be a problem. Isn't that nature's way of saying 'sit this one out'?
Rather than encourage society to devote so many resources to finding new ways to let you make a baby, how about adopting? There are soooo many deserving children out there who are aching for a home. They already exist - they already have the need.
Don't fiddle with nature - do the simpler thing and bring an existing child into your life.
First you have to define "defect", after all "defects" are what made us here today, (i'am not disagreeing with your main point btw.) perfection is a variable not a static
So? All it takes is a single gene to produce an adverse effect because existing mechanisms provide no negative feedback for it.
So what? We all know the mitochondria are what instill the powers of the Force so IMHO they are the most important 0.00052%!
Stop this - RIGHT NOW.
Mitochondria do not have DNA, therefore the UK is not creating babies using the DNA from three people.
Mitochondria are being transferred whole, and contain RNA.
I know this is slashdot, and we must expect inaccurate reporting of scientific and technical subjects - but really...
Off-Topic much.
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To read that as IMF. I thought the whole point was secrecy. What about the NOC list.
Great, now all the idiots who treat the LaHaye/Jenkins literary trainwreck Left Behind like it was scripture are going to pitch a fit, because there the antichrist is the result of genetic engineering to combine sperm cells of two gay lovers which is then used to artificially inseminate a woman.
While we are at it, why not include Monsanto's RoundUp-ready gene so it will survive the silent spring.