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World's First Baby Born With New '3 Parent' Technique (newscientist.com)
A five-month-old baby boy has been revealed as the first kid in the world with three biological parents, reports New Scientist. The baby boy was apparently conceived by a technique that has been legally approved in the UK, and lets parents with genetic disorders have healthy babies. Though, the method used in this particular cases was slightly different from one legalized in the UK. From the report: Zhang (a doctor) took a different approach, called spindle nuclear transfer. He removed the nucleus from one of the mother's eggs and inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting egg -- with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor -- was then fertilised with the father's sperm. Zhang's team used this approach to create five embryos, only one of which developed normally. This embryo was implanted in the mother and the child was born nine months later. "It's exciting news," says Bert Smeets at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The team will describe the findings at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's Scientific Congress in Salt Lake City in October.
Well TBH the summary omits the most major point of the thing. Which is the REASON WHY!
Here, dear readers, is the reason why they did it:
- The mom had been pregnant with about five other kids before. They all died early, before three years of age.
- She has a condition that all her past babies are guaranteed to be born with, and remember they will all die early.
- So that gene was removed from her eggs and replaced with a stable gene from another.
- She gives birth to a disease free child.
That's why it's "good news" to her and the doctors. Any exaggerative thoughts about super-babies, etc is just worrysome fodder.
TL;DR? read the article.
Okay, this may be the world's first baby, but there are apparently 30-50 teenagers with three parents.
The girl with three biological parents
The technique was pioneered in the late 1990s, but then the US FDA said "please cut it out", and as far as we know everyone did.
So, yes, the future looks bright for this new baby, given that several dozen other beneficiaries of this technique seem to be doing quite well in their teenage years...