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British MPs Approve 3-Parent Babies
An anonymous reader writes: A vote of 382-128 in the UK's House of Commons gave approval for a procedure that allows the creation of babies using DNA from three parents. If the measure passes the House of Lords and gets licensed by the fertility regulator, the UK would be the first country to allow such genetic engineering. The medical procedure was designed to help conception when genetic diseases could be passed through mitochondrial DNA. A child inherits mitochondria only from its mother, and these mitochondria have their own DNA, which doesn't affect things like the child's appearance.
The purpose of the procedure is to replace the mother's mitochondria, and that can happen in two different ways. In one method, doctors take eggs from the mother and from a donor, removing the nucleus of both. The mother's nucleus is then implanted in the donor's egg, which can then be fertilized by the father's sperm. The other method is similar, but both eggs are fertilized before the nucleus swap takes place.
There has been lively debate about this issue, with critics raising ethical concerns and questioning the procedure's success rate. They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children. Proponents point out that less than 0.1% of the child's DNA will come from the donor, and it won't affect anything other than the child's health.
The purpose of the procedure is to replace the mother's mitochondria, and that can happen in two different ways. In one method, doctors take eggs from the mother and from a donor, removing the nucleus of both. The mother's nucleus is then implanted in the donor's egg, which can then be fertilized by the father's sperm. The other method is similar, but both eggs are fertilized before the nucleus swap takes place.
There has been lively debate about this issue, with critics raising ethical concerns and questioning the procedure's success rate. They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children. Proponents point out that less than 0.1% of the child's DNA will come from the donor, and it won't affect anything other than the child's health.
This is, I think, more about the social situation then it is about the % of DNA.
People can become a parent even if they have 0% similar DNA. It never has been an issue, so now would it suddenly become one.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
child custody in a divorce? i don't know. might even be some BAD health things.
The UK is now set to become the first country to introduce laws to allow the creation of babies from three people.
Surely it's only not allowed when there was a law disallowing it? Which law was that? Are there other countries that would need a new law to allow it?
They also bring up the slippery slope argument that this will lead to further genetic modification of children
I sure hope so. Where is my star trek future?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since this story has been around for a couple of days I would have hoped slashdot would know better and have avoided the sensationalist headline. Here's what the experts say.
The biggest problem is that this has been described as three-parent IVF. In fact it is 2.001-parent IVF," Gillian Lockwood, a reproductive ethicist, told the BBC. "Less than a tenth of one per cent of the genome is actually going to be affected. It is not part of what makes us genetically who we are. It doesn't affect height, eye colour, intelligence, musicality. It simply allows the batteries to work properly."
I, for one, welcome our evil genetically engineered super-human overlords...
OMG! Huckabee was right!
Lesbians will be marrying horses next.
So glad some white upper class inbred nobles can spend money to make their precious baby.
These aren't upper class inbred nobles, and if they're spending their money on it, why shouldn't they? Or must we now have every purchase ratified to ensure it doesn't have any detriment to the world at large? Because then you could wave goodbye to a lot of luxuries.
Given the choice between them producing a string of unhealthy babies that live (in some cases) short painful lives and require round-the-clock care, and them being able to have one or two healthy kids, I'd take this any day.
rich Corinthian leather.
I've got a better, more practical line that successfully trolls both Republicans AND Democrats in one fell swoop. When you're in a chat room, any chat room, (especially chat rooms like trade chat in World of Warcraft) just say this simple line:
"I think abortion is ok so long as it's only for minorities."
It's not like they're trying to make the children glow in the dark...
That's just tragic. Clearly making children glow in the dark would help decrease the danger of traffic accidents immensly, which is why I myself dip my own children into radioactive waste on a daily basis.
Bird mitochondria are super efficient at processing energy. I have energy problems, so this would really be a boost for me.
The ManBearPig is that much closer to becoming a reality...
Hell, I'd be surprised if Texas legislators don't respond by going to five parents.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
and the result was unexpected Twins.
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Get over it, Genetic engineering of humans is the future for our species. People "Dying" is something that will be looked back on like we do the middle ages.
We will evolve, we will survive and we will spread out into the galaxy. DNA engineering is the future.
If the measure passes the House of Lords and gets licensed by the fertility regulator
To anyone who has seen the film "The Missouri Breaks" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... . . . the term "regulator" has a special meaning.
I am seriously considering adding that title to my email footer . . . "Certified Fertility Regulator" . . . although, that is NOT what you may think at first . . . watch the movie!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Watching this 'debate', I've been unsurprised; but depressed, at the quality of 'argument' trotted out. The one that particularly annoys me is the "We can't allow it unless we know that it's totally safe and effective! What about possible side effects?!!".
Guess what, kids, there have been precious few medically relevant developments, ever, that came without some human risk. This doesn't imply endorsement of the Josef Mengele protocol for experimental ethics, it's just a fact that we've (so far, I'm all for somebody who can improve this) been unable to avoid, and even the most by-the-book-and-informed-consent contemporary clinical trials are subject to it to some degree. We can't exactly know if it's actually fully safe and effective in humans by use of animal models and pure reason.
Perhaps more importantly, this is a technique to treat disorders that cause grievous impairment and/or early, unpleasant, death. It has long been a commonplace of medical ethics(and simple commonsense decision making) that you don't want a cure worse than the disease; but that nasty diseases can have cures that you would welcome compared to that disease; but would be horrified by in the context of a less serious one(eg. basically all cancer treatment and most surgery). You calibrate your sense of risk based on what the alternatives are, not based on Ideal Perfect Risk Free. In the case of mitochondrial defects, the alternatives suck.
Finally, if you don't wish to allow treatment of mitochondrial defects(effective treatment, that is, there are various, mostly symptom-easing, treatments of not terribly impressive efficacy for the symptoms of mitochondrial disorders; but only swapping out mitochondria, or advanced and aggressive genetic engineering, show much hope for a cure); what do you propose? Do mitochondrially defective would-be-mothers get to roll the dice and hope for a less-sick baby? Do we start charging them with negligent homicide if they keep spawning horribly doomed offspring even after enough failures to know that trying again is dangerously likely to condemn their child to an ugly and swift death?
If you are concerned about 'germline' genetic engineering, this somewhat-uncomfortably-retro 'eugenic' proposal is the other viable option to preventing mitochondrial disease; but I'm guessing that it won't be too popular.
(All that said, I hope that the treatment does work as well as its backers hope, and doesn't turn out to suffer from the drawbacks its critics fear, and if it does turn out to be too dangerous/imperfectly effective, I think that it should go back to the drawing board; but these phantoms of 'need to know for sure that it works' and 'must be proven safe' seem like disgustingly transparent rhetorical devices, not serious ethical arguments.)
Why would they need a new species classification, much less a genus? Your mitochondrial DNA differs from that of everyone else except your siblings by the same mother, and somehow you share a species label with the rest of us. The products of this technique will still have human nuclear DNA and human mDNA, just without Mom contributing half of the nuclear DNA and all of the mDNA, but instead only the nuclear DNA.
Future historians attempting to use mitochondria to trace female ancestry genetically will curse this development(just as the ones attempting to use Y chromosomes to genetically trace male ancestry would curse a hypothetical 'Y swap' corrective procedure for X-linked genetic disease); but it's hard to see an argument for why the product of this technique would be considered anything other than human.
I'm not sure how the issue got the very Daily Mail headline of "3 person babies". By that same logic anyone with a donor organ is a "monster franken-hybrid of two people!".
Essentially it's a transplant (astonishingly) early in that baby's life. Kind of impressive that we could pull it off, actually. Far better that we do something medically that will terminate that line of mitochondria from being passed on to make more people miserable.
That said, the 'poster mom' for this condition Sharon Bernardi has lost SEVEN children to this condition. (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19648992) "...Each of her first three children died within hours of birth and no-one knew why....At the same time, her mother revealed that she'd had three stillbirths before Sharon had been born. Further investigations by doctors revealed that members of Sharon's extended family had lost another eight children between them."
Her 4th child survived until he was 21, living a life of dysfunction and pain;
"..."In the last year of his life Edward was in chronic pain. He had dystonic spasms caused by things going wrong in his brain. His muscles would go into spasm for up to six hours at a time. Drugs could not help him."
"...Sharon and Neil kept on trying for a healthy baby but without luck. Although three more children were born, none lived beyond the age of two. Each time one of their children died, they told themselves that "the death was a one-off". After their last child had a heart attack and died in 2000 they stopped trying...."
I'm sorry, but what the hell? How colossally selfish does someone have to be to just keep pumping out babies that die? There are at least hundreds of thousands of adoptable children *desperate* for parents to love them, your womb is so fucking sacred that you're willing to (essentially) just keep killing babies until you get one that's "of you"?
That's not the most sympathetic figure they could have picked to represent why this was needed.
-Styopa
One thing I don't get is if you know your genes carry a decease that can affect your child's health, then why even try to reproduce? Why not drop the notion of having to continue your rotten genetic line, and instead adopt a healthy child? Jeez.
...our new three-headed overlords.
It certainly isn't my money, so I will STFU; but depending on whether or not it ends up being 'On the NHS' it might be the money of rather a lot of brits.
And, while I'd be deeply unimpressed if this argument is used to suppress a specific fertility technique just because it's 'eww, icky!', I would be more generally supportive of questions about exactly how much money need be spent(by others, the would-be-parent can do as they wish) on attempts to engineer around the various defects that render people less able, or unable, to reproduce.
Proposals to 'forbid the unfit' from reproducing always slippery-slope to nowhere good, often quite quickly, so I would definitely oppose such; but I'm less sold on the idea that "I want children that share genes with me!" is necessarily a medical problem compelling enough to divert medical resources from the various "I'd prefer not to die in agony" cases, especially when young humans are not a terribly scarce resource.
Oh wait, they were. Um... Ok... Think of how hard it is going to be to write a love song for that!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Side effects include eating like a bird. Contrary to popular belief, what this means is throwing all your food up in the air, putting it in your hair and letting it fall out again before picking it up again and eating it...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"critics raising ethical concerns" no seriously, beside religious catholic concern about offing an embryo to save another, what real ethical concern is there *at all* ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
If you are going to make that daft argument then all babies only have one parent since each parent normally only contributes 50% of the DNA. Please let's not start fighting ignorance with stupidity.
If you are concerned about the possible existence of beings whose genetic material is derived from more than two other beings, you should perhaps meditate on the meaning of having grandparents.
It may be an error to confuse scientific reality with newspaper headlines that are designed to stimulate sales.
Even your siblings are likely to have difference mtDNA.
Not as different as your neighbour, or your father, but different.
mtDNA is copied by an ancient strategy that we stole along with the organelles themselves. It is a bit half-arsed and screws up a LOT more often than the copier used on the rest of our DNA. Which is why we've got adult women whose kids die from mtDNA faults - their mtDNA worked OK, but the copies they're giving to the kids are busted due to a transcription error. We can't fix that (yet) but we can throw it away and give them a replacement.
To any biomed folks who might know this, I'd be interested in the details.
There doesn't seem to be much about "donor matching" in the article. Obviously, you don't want outright defective mitochondria used. HOWEVER, it also seems to me that the mitochondrial genome works in conjunction with the nuclear genome (especially since most mitochondrial genes have, over the millennia, migrated to the nucleus), and that matching between the two is relevant. In fact, there are prominent theorists who believe part of the reason we have mitochondria passed mainly from only one parent is to make sure of a mitochondria-nuclear genome match (at least, for half of the genome), and that this match is so critical that it helps to explain why females, who start off with several million potential eggs, wind up with a "top 200" for their reproductive lives.
What work has been done on this?
Kythe
The kind of Frankenstein that is otherwise similar to their parents except for having functional mitochondrial DNA instead of the flawed mDNA of the mother.
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... but GMO food is OMG DEADLY!
Mitochondrial transplants: Seems to be driven by doctors and scientists genuinely trying to help (I'm assuming that the drug companies would make more money out of sick children). Risk: A few kids are born sick, or go on to have sick children. Tragic on a personal scale, but the world doesn't end. Humans are at the top of the food chain, so its not going to fuck up the ecosystem any more than humans have already fucked it. You're only moving DNA between humans, and with a small number of people. Benefits: parents with bad mitochondria can have disease-free children.
GMO food: driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money, acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops and 'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers. Risks: you're fucking with the bottom of the food chain - screw up and the results will affect everything further up the chain (including us). You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species. Benefits: only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
This is like swapping out a bad battery that was installed in a new car. Just because someone put a Die Hard in doesn't somehow make your car 1/3 from Sears.
I've seen a lot of comments saying that its just an improvement in mitochondria and has no other impact on the original "human" DNA. This is an over simplification and is only possibly true if just the mitochondria is transplanted from the 3rd party donor. More likely its the DNA in the cells nucleus that will be transplanted to an egg from the 3rd party donor. In this case epigenetics can and will have a significant impact on how the genes of the original two parents gets expressed.
epigenetics
So, yeah, there would be more than just getting functioning mitochondria, all the organelles in the donor cell are mixed in as well as all the regulating chemistry involved in gene expression.
There's gotta be something better than Cyanide to take in pill form to commit suicide in a pinch...
This only works if you're a racist who projects his racism onto Republicans.
You do know there are black Republicans, right?
You do know that early 20th century progressives-- most of whom were Democrats-- advocated abortion for "undesirables" like poor blacks and immigrants, right?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I disagree with this. It smacks far too much of genetic engineering of humans, which I consider to be fundamentally wrong. It's barely a step above deciding to abort a fetus based solely on their genetic test results. While I realize abortion is a personal choice, that does disturb me on a fundamental level.
Some people just shouldn't have kids together. There have always been issues of blood type compatability and such to suggest people shouldn't have babies. A genetic disorder in one or both parents is just another case of the same situation.
There is no shortage of kids awaiting adoption. Until all of them are adopted, I don't think any of the in vitro techniques that we have in use today should have been allowed. Being a parent isn't about biology; it's about loving your children and taking care of them, regardless of who their genetic contributors were.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
That's a brilliant idea. If only there was some way to conceive a child with some other mans DNA. Fortunately for researchers the techniques have not yet been developed, so they can safely investigate genetic ancestry without worry of this hypothetical 'y swap' procedure. /s
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Congratulations, you've just moved everything to a black market, contributing to violent crime. You've also greatly wounded innovation, which means that we've wasted even more resources. We don't have the kind of resources or knowledge needed to do that without it turning into a huge clusterfuck.
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Given that this technique was introduced, after a long and arduous regulatory process, when the mitochondrially defective could just use donor eggs instead, suggests that there is a demand for children constructed in the "As related to me as possible; but minus the lethal defect" mold. If you drop the "as related to me as possible" requirement, merely getting healthy gametes is much easier(especially sperm, since egg harvesting is a somewhat unpleasant process).
You need a license to drive a car, pilot an aircraft, and handle some hazardous chemicals, but any moron can pump out a dozen squalling brats with less consideration than society gives to having a litter of puppies.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
A precursor to Gattaca?
At some point in the future, genetic analysis will be messed up because the lineage fo the mtDNA is not from the same mother that gave the nuclear DNA.
Will be a serious puzzle when this is done without any accompanying documentation that person X had this done, or a marker is present to indicate it was.
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You sound like Margret Sanger.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
progressive excludes conservatives almost by default
Honestly I've always hated the term progressive. It's just a label that somebody slaps on themselves when they unilaterally believe that their ideas and only their ideas are the true way forward. Groups that have called themselves progressive in the past not only include eugenicists, but also Nazis, prohibitionists, and anybody else who has a grand vision of a future their own little utopia that is good for themselves but not necessarily for anybody else.
That, and history very often looks dis-favorably upon progressives.
This the UK, so the treatment will be available to anyone who needs it, free of charge, just like IVF.
Or just grow up and join the future.
driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,
You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).
acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops
You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?
'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.
Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?
You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.
The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.
only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).
You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor
If you are going to manually select for better mitochondrial DNA, what's the difference between that and manually selecting every other bit of DNA.
Sure, we select DNA when we choose a mate, but when you're twiddling with it below the cellular level what's keeping people from custom babies? Allowing *just* this will permit for a race of super men, bred for their superior metabolism by simply selecting better mitochondria.
"But this is for fixing a specific disease." Sure, but that doesn't make the results any different. You engineered a "better" baby. Why can't anyone else do that. What makes you and your broken DNA special? I want to engineer out acne & BRCA mutations. Oh, too bad for you, can't pay for custom baby fixing and now your baby is stuck with Alzheimer's. If we're just "fixing" things with babies, red hair is a "defect", let's remove that and replace it with blonde...
IMO, allowing this is a slippery slope.
Given their predilection for confiscating pocket knives and spying on all communications, the end goal will be "sheeple".
Have gnu, will travel.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fuck this shit, Lillian Greenwood is getting a letter from me.
Be sure to use your green pen.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It's one of those cases where, if you're right, you're great, but if you guess wrong you wind up doing harm.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Of if we do, please televise the battles so that people can choose which side they belong to.
I take it you've not heard of Fox News then? Although sometimes they do switch it around and fight stupidity with ignorance. Best watched in very small doses though.
There are countries out there in the world where the political landscape is very different, but for many decades now in the USA the fundamental difference between Republicans/Conservatives and Democrats/Liberals is rich versus poor.
No, not really. In fact the top 1% that are the frequent target of the left have a slight majority of democratic voters. And that isn't the conservative democrat type, rather it's the Warren Buffet-alikes.
Will the first kid that comes out be called Damien?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
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BT
It is a the4chnic which is solely about mitochondria. Which therefore does not even touch those subject. Once there is a doctor proposing to change dark hair to blond hair we can have that debate. But you are debating something which is neither possible nor even discussed. Why the heck bring eugenic up ? This makes no sense. This always happen when a scientist propose or correct a genetic illness , people immediately jump and yell "ethical concern ! Eugenic ! " as if it had ANYTHING to do with the proposal.
how about discussing the proposal at hand, rather than raise ghost of something which was NOT proposed at all ? We already have had that debate on genetic selection of positive trait. We already massively refused it. The debated stuff now is not eugenic, but the removal or selection against NEGATIVE trait. And I hardly see the ethical implication of that. Attempt to switch to the selection of positive trait is fallacious and not part of that debate.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org