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UK Government Proposes Rules To Allow 'Three-Parent Embryos'
sciencehabit writes "The U.K. government today issued proposed regulations that would allow researchers to try a new and controversial in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure in patients. The technique could allow women who are carriers of mitochondrial disease to have healthy, genetically related children. But it also transfers DNA from one egg or embryo into another, a form of genetic alteration that could be passed on to future generations. Altering the genes of human egg cells or embryos in IVF procedures is now forbidden in the United Kingdom."
I thought the SyFy channel ran out of ideas after Sharknado. I guess not.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
This is a solution doesn't just allow such women to have healthy, genetically related children. It frees their lineage from the disease. Implement this fix in one generation, and the children, grandchildren, and all their progeny are disease-free.
I find it incredibly offensive to say that women should be forced to condemn their children to suffer from a preventable disease, or be prevented from bearing genetically-related children, simply because some people think the cure is "unnatural".
DNA testing would see the parentage of the third doner without specialized testing. Mitochondrial DNS are ONLY passed to offspring by their mothers, and given the procedure, there will still be a "DNS" mother involved, insuring that a reasonable set of parents can still be determined using the normal procedures. Not a nightmare at all.
No, because the UK isn't Kansas.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
cancer isn't new.
back in the old days they would have called something like SARS a walking pneumonia, as sort of a catch all for a contagious pneumonia that sometimes progresses in an acute pneumonia. There could possibly been dozens of viral outbreaks like SARS in the past that we don't know about because virology didn't exist to identify the cause of such diseases. And it wasn't in fashion for doctors back then to give a collection of symptoms scary sounding acronyms.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
what could go wrong?
Plenty of things could go wrong. And it is legitimate for a government to regulate artificial reproductive techniques to ensure the procedures are reasonably safe. But it is NOT legitimate for the government to ban or interfere with individual reproductive choices because they are "immoral" or "don't seem natural". If/when these procedures are shown to be at least as safe as traditional methods of conception and childbirth, then people should be free to use them.
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what could go wrong?
Plenty of things could go wrong. And it is legitimate for a government to regulate artificial reproductive techniques to ensure the procedures are reasonably safe. But it is NOT legitimate for the government to ban or interfere with individual reproductive choices because they are "immoral" or "don't seem natural". If/when these procedures are shown to be at least as safe as traditional methods of conception and childbirth, then people should be free to use them.
Why is it okay for government to ban or interfere with other choices that are immoral or don't seem natural such as rape, murder, etc.? Isn't the purpose of government to ensure the common good? While one may argue that reproductive choices are moral or immoral, drawing a distinction saying those morality choices are off limits but all of the other ones are fair game seems to imply that something other than morality is involved in the discussion.
It is a myth that society (government) can be divorced from morality. Even something as basic as a tax code is full of moral decisions. So, if reproductive choices are to be made in a moral vacuum, why not all moral choices?
This new technology is an affront to our traditional three-parent conception model!
It really should be not a parent but a genetic information contributor. If it is parent they have an extra target for child support.
However if they do make it parent then I want my probiotic yogurt maker listed as my parent and years of support payments. I am linking the bacteria are a large part of our component body to this notion that a supplier of genetic materials becomes financially liable for care.
SO .. will the third parent be asked to pay child support by the court?
I suspect that a lawyer would advise against this; but I would be sorely tempted to point out that anyone who thinks that providing a lifetime supply of mitochondria that actually make it to the 'ATP' part of the job isn't 'child support' in a sense that makes anything after the invention of currency look like trivial stamp collecting, they are welcome to explore this hypothesis with the assistance of such obliging simulations of mitochondrial defects as cynanide, 2,4-dinitrophenol, or Flavotoxin A. Should they be available for comment afterward, I suspect they would prove... more agreeable.
If anything, in this particular arrangment, it's that deadbeat jerkoff who managed to provide a whole sperm cell who should get out the checkbook(especially if kiddo is a girl, and not even exploiting the otherwise unavailable properties of having a Y chromosome...).
DNA testing would see the parentage of the third doner without specialized testing. Mitochondrial DNS are ONLY passed to offspring by their mothers, and given the procedure, there will still be a "DNS" mother involved, insuring that a reasonable set of parents can still be determined using the normal procedures. Not a nightmare at all.
One annoyance, for a select group, would be that such offspring would toast the assumptions behind mitochondrial inheritance modeling(since you always get the mitocondria from mommy, and the thing still has nearly as much independent genome as it did in its free-living days, mitochondrial DNA is a good trick for tracking maternity over historical time, similar to the use of Y chromosomes for historical paternity tracking.
If some kid suddenly shows up with a random(but functional) stranger's mitochondrial DNA, rather than their mother's defective stuff, they and their descendants will give some future anthropologists a dose of Extra Challenge Mode.
What if this leaves the child diseased or crippled with some kind of birth defect? Or that child's children?
That's what this will prevent.
This isn't "Hey, let's try this for no particular reason". This is a means of (at least hypothetically) preventing heritable mitocondrial disorders, such as Leigh syndrome.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Individual liberties be damned.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Depends on what govt. your talking about. IN the US, the constitution basically sets up the federal govt. to have a set, small enumerated set of powers (yes, sadly we're really getting away from that)...but it should be there to keep things civil,enforce contracts, and prevent crime. But I don't see that it is there to be mommy and daddy, and say what I can or cannot do with my body or my life.
And really...how does banning this type of thing affect the common good one way or another? This is purely a decision and action by consenting adults, why should anyone else, particularly the government have a say in what they are doing here?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
By its very definition of how it's done is unnatural and the long term consequences to the gene pool unknown.
By that definition so is just about every medical treatment or procedure ever devised. Any treatment that cures someone and lets them live long enough to reproduce affects the gene pool this include vaccines, antibiotics etc. Indeed you could argue that this problem is itself unnatural since many people with genetic diseases would not live long enough to reproduce in the natural world. So, unless you want to argue that we are better off without any medicine we are already tampering with the gene pool and an increase in genetic disease is likely one consequence. So surely the logical response is to use medicine to cure this problem by getting rid of the defective genes which medicine allowed into the gene pool in the first place?
a great opportunity for women like that.
Also a great step forward to removing genetic diseases from the gene pool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The burden of proof is not on me to justify the safety of biological reproduction.
Actually, you should be modded -1, Kneejerk. Seems to me this is not about "Heather has two mommies and a daddy", but specifically to avoid known expected birth defects due to bad mitochondrial DNA in the mother.
Mitochondrial DNA is exclusively inherited from one parent, the mother in humans. Swap out the known bad stuff for some other woman's known good stuff, and Bab's your aunt.
Mitochondrial DNA#Female_inheritance
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Many species engage in rape as a reproductive strategy. Ducks for example. The essential hunting, restraining, and forcible penetration strategy is common across various species.
I have the actual answer for why rape is wrong because I've been able to correctly define right and wrong. This requires some explanation, but the final result will be apparent.
People seek security. In the absence of society, people are individuals with numerous natural threats from wild animals, the weather, starvation, and the like. People form society as protection from these things. If the society fails to create security--if it creates an unsafe scenario--people will again form society: revolution.
This expands into a long-winded discussion that simply comes across as thus: things are wrong when individuals are threatened by having no protection against them. You have protection against being put in jail: Don't commit crimes. Tyrannical government making illegal things which every person naturally and instinctively feels compulsion for and which does not threaten others is, thus, wrong: the society becomes threatening. Rape is wrong because the fear of being raped is a thing that people will constantly seek to escape until they form a society with rules and enforcement mechanisms to prevent rape. Murder, theft, and so on. Starvation brings crime, and thus society seeks to eliminate starvation; but wealth redistribution is also a threat to society, until there is so much wealth that almost all persons have all which they desire (Star Trek economics: post-scarcity means money is effectively meaningless because there is so much of everything including labor that all things are cheap and there is more money than purchasing demand).
Incest and bestiality are considered wrong because a group of people--a large group of people, but initially just certain puritans--believe it is immoral, and they also believe that immorality somehow threatens them. These people want control over society, and want society to not expose them to things which will not harm them but which will upset their world view; however, if society accepts those things, then in short decades most of those in society will no longer feel threatened by them. That is the difference between "immoral" and "wrong": if society allows brutal, violent rape, then in decades or centuries people still are terrified that they may at any moment be violently raped, thus society must and will change this.
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Then you burn the defective thing.
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No, because the UK isn't Kansas.
No, but they have their own mess going on there in the CSA (child support agency)... Apparently earning its own level of bureaucratic hell...
My DNA is already a mis-mash of genes from millions of ancestors. What would one more matter?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think there are some bird species with super efficient ATP generation due to superior mitochondria. I’d love to be able to replace all of mine with theirs.
You start off by saying how many species engage in rape as a reproductive strategy, but then conclude with why rape is wrong because people will still be terrified and thus society must change this. However, while I don't condone rape, it is an effective strategy for passing on a male's genetic code. When the Norse raided villages and raped and pillaged (or the Huns or just about any other group), from their moral perspective, raping those conquered did not cause a moral problem for them.
Your premise is that things are wrong when people feels an instinctive compulsion against some act. And yet, what you are calling instinct is really just a form of conditioning. In the West, we are instinctively opposed to murder, not because of instinct, but because society says it is wrong and has done so for a long time. But, it still isn't instinct. Rape, except for the most violent types, has pretty much been accepted by society until the last 150 years.
You assume that if society allows these brutalities that eventually, because people are terrified, it will somehow change. However, there isn't any evidence to support that hypothesis and actually quite a bit to counter it. The strong prey on the weak. That is just as true for humans as it is lions. Change doesn't occur until somebody stronger forces their will on others. Historically, that stronger force was the king or the pope or some other form of religion. People changed because the pain of not changing was too painful. Today, there are no kings and religion has lost it's allure for many, so exactly where do we get our moral code from, the whim of the people? That is relativism, not morality. Basically, relativism removes any absolute truths so a society that can decide brutality to women is wrong is just as capable as deciding it is perfectly acceptable. The problem with relativism is that it allows for a man to sleep with a 14 year old girl in parts of Africa as acceptable and a crime in the US. Is the African immoral? No. Should they change? That depends. Who is to say Western sensibilities are the correct ones? Obviously, those in the West believe their ways are correct. But that believe often leads to war, as the Western governments then take on the role of king or religion to enforce their beliefs on others.
No, what you propose is just a clouded form of the strong make the rules for the weak. It seems acceptable to you, because in these issues, you agree with the outcome. But that doesn't make the moral system you describe correct or accurate.
Depends on what govt. your talking about. IN the US, the constitution basically sets up the federal govt. to have a set, small enumerated set of powers (yes, sadly we're really getting away from that)...but it should be there to keep things civil,enforce contracts, and prevent crime. But I don't see that it is there to be mommy and daddy, and say what I can or cannot do with my body or my life.
And really...how does banning this type of thing affect the common good one way or another? This is purely a decision and action by consenting adults, why should anyone else, particularly the government have a say in what they are doing here?
Being for the common good has nothing to do with the government being mommy and daddy for the people. As for banning this procedure being wrong, well, why should the government regulate anything, then? One can make an argument that any decision made by consenting adults is okay. Don't want to pay to have a board certified surgeon remove your appendix? Fine, maybe the butcher down the street will do it. After all, as long as there are consenting adults, that's fine, right? But, if it is alright for the government to regulate other medical procedures and who can perform them, again, for the common good, then why would that not be the case for these procedures?
Simply put, if the government is allowed to regulate medical procedures, devices, medication, etc., what makes this, as of yet, experimental procedure, any different?
Individual liberties be damned.
What individual liberty is being damned if this procedure is not approved? The couple in question is still free to procreate. They are still free to use IVP to do it and screen the embryos for those with the defect or not. They are free to adopt, if they decide the risk is too great. Of course, adoption would not be the woman's natural child, but then again, if you replace the mitochondrial DNA with another woman's, then neither is the child that would result.
So, what individual liberty is being damned?
The couple in question is still free to procreate.
Just like you're still free to travel even though the TSA will molest you at airports. The availability of alternate solutions does not mean that your individual liberties are not being infringed upon; you are taking away one possible choice, and that alone is enough to infringe upon people's individual liberties, no matter how many other choices exist.
Awful, awful logic.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Fine, maybe the butcher down the street will do it. After all, as long as there are consenting adults, that's fine, right?
Yep. If some dumbass wants to risk it, I don't really care; fewer stupid people that way.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Liberty is normally thought of as a freedom from coercion or a freedom to act. Since nobody is being forced to do this procedure, the question is whether restricting a medical procedure actually restricts one's freedom to act.
The individual is not being kept from having IVP, nor is the donor of the mitochondrial DNA being restricted from donating her egg. The donor doesn't have a right to force anybody to use her egg, so she isn't harmed in any way if the procedure isn't allowed. Likewise, the woman can still have a child either naturally or by artificial means, so her liberty isn't restricted either.
The only two people who might be impacted, in terms of liberty, are the doctor, but that would imply he has a right to do any medical procedure devised. But the courts have already ruled that is not a right, and since it is not, liberty isn't impinged. The other entity is the child who cannot be born healthy without the procedure. One could argue that his liberty is impinged, however, he doesn't even exist without the procedure and as such, has no liberty to impinge.
So, back to the original question, whose liberty is being restricted?
Since nobody is being forced to do this procedure, the question is whether restricting a medical procedure actually restricts one's freedom to act.
Restricting this would eliminate one possible choice, which restricts people's freedom. Random rationalizations won't change anything. The end.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Since nobody is being forced to do this procedure, the question is whether restricting a medical procedure actually restricts one's freedom to act.
Restricting this would eliminate one possible choice, which restricts people's freedom. Random rationalizations won't change anything. The end.
You seem to think that people have some kind of government granted right to choice, they do not. I'm short, no matter how much I want it, I cannot choose to be a fighter pilot. I pilot many aircraft, including decommissioned fighter planes, but I still did not have a choice to fly one for the military. Did that regulation restrict my liberty? No. Nor does restricting the use of experimental procedures.
Ducks are not as social as human beings. Humans depend on society for survival; rape decreases survival overall, while ducks benefit overall from rape.
Your assumption of conditioning versus instinct is nonsense. Conditioning stems from instinct: instinctive needs being met or harmed provides conditioning, among other things. People instinctively have a desire to live, which is why they will kill to take things they want/need, and will kill in self defense if conditioned largely not to kill. When this desire is threatened, people run away: a raging killer--human or a wild bengal tiger--will get people to either kill it or run far away.
A society will eventually provide protection for a people: running away takes energy and thus decreases survival (requires more food), thus a society will seek to reduce the amount of threats. That's why we've been conditioned to not like wild animals--because wild animals are dangerous, and it was easier to clean them away from society, and now we are more conditioned to react even more sensitively to the threat of wild animals. Originally, we instinctively did not want to be eaten by wolves or diseased to death by rats, and so we made efforts to reduce these problems which were real and undesirable but not terrifying and unknown.
Similarly, murderers and rapists bring harm and produce a fear reaction. The free flow of murder and rape without consequence produces fear in individuals: it makes them afraid to participate in society. Thus society develops a majority driver that murder and rape are wrong, and it becomes imperative to prevent or punish these acts.
You will notice that every society develops a common theme: anything that threatens the stronger members of society is wrong. A totalitarian, centrally-dominated society run by a small group who oppress a large group will enforce few rules about murder, rape, and theft if they do not impact the ruling class--but will strongly enforce protection of the ruling class. A male-dominated society where women are treated as property will allow for rape of women more often, except as it damages the reputation of a family or the value of selling off daughters as wives or whatever. Egalitarian societies ("Equalitarian" is apparently not a word) provide protections for all classes: the US has allowed for the murder of blacks, the beating of women, and the disenfranchising of homosexuals throughout its history; over time, the US has come to treat these groups as equals, and moved to protect their rights.
You will notice as well that major uprisings occur when the majority society or a significant group finds the rules of society unpalatable. For example: the French wee treated with little concern, trodden on, occasionally murdered, not given a strong police force to their benefit, and taxed out of existence. This suited the Bourgeois ruling class, who had no imperative to protect the peasantry since only the Bourgeois made the rules and sensed no threat from the peasantry: a firm hand would keep them in line, of course. Well, it didn't. They got together, murdered the Bourgeois out of existence, and formed a new society in main attempt to attain safety for themselves.
Other rules come mainly from conditioned values. It's wrong everywhere to murder peoples' children: society will eventually get sick of this and band together to kill you. But there are many tribal societies today in which it is considered a rite of passage for 11 year old boys to perform fellatio and swallow semen to attain manhood. There were ancient Greek and Roman societies in which sex with young teens or children was considered normal, healthy, and desirable. These acts did not distress the parents because they held no Puritan values; in fact, Phoenician values suggest that life is for pleasure and play, and so sexual behavior with a 13 year old girl is considered healthy and good for the child. Modern societies follow a value system in which this is considered damaging--at least to the passing of
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You seem to think that people have some kind of government granted right to choice, they do not.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
Did that regulation restrict my liberty?
Yes.
Thank you Dave Raggett
You seem to think that people have some kind of government granted right to choice, they do not.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
Did that regulation restrict my liberty?
Yes.
Please explain how it restricted my liberty. Do I have a right to fly a fighter jet? No, I do not. Therefore, if I do not have a right to do something, I cannot have my liberty restricted by not being permitted to do it. Liberty only impacts things you have a right to in the first place. That's why not being allowed to sleep with your neighbors kids also doesn't restrict your liberty.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
You seem to think that the constitution is a blacklist of things the government can't do; it is not.
Thank you Dave Raggett
UK, not US. I'm talking about the US constitution, and this story is about the UK.
Absolutely, though, if government thugs take away your choices, they're infringing upon your liberties. Whether or not you or the government acknowledges that those liberties exist is another matter. Government thugs routinely (TSA, NSA, Patriot Act, DUI checkpoints, etc.) ignore people's rights.
Thank you Dave Raggett