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.

Comments

Call me strange but...

[JustNiz]

>> "It's exciting news," says Bert Smeets

I REALLY don't get how making more humans (even wierd hybrids) is meant to be somehow self-evidently always a good thing.

Re:Call me strange but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only two groups of people think about their mitochondria DNA.
1) scientists studying mitochondria
2) people with malfunctioning mitochondria

There is no failure of definition here, the DNA that defines human form and function is entirely the merge of a half set from the father and a half set from the mother. Just as through a natural conception. In theory, it should be possible to extract mitochondria from the father and implant those into an egg cell to maintain even more familial connection, but such a process would be more difficult as clearing out the faulty mitochondria would involve more and smaller targets than replacing a nucleus.

Re:Call me strange but...

[Empiric]

And that, as a matter of historical fact, came from philosophy.

Odd that your implicit assertion would be that it came suddenly from nowhere.

But if we're going to play dictionary games, here's Merriam-Webster:

noun sci-ence
Popularity: Top 1% of lookups
Simple Definition of science
: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation
: a particular area of scientific study (such as biology, physics, or chemistry) : a particular branch of science
: a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.

Does this scope specifically and only to the specific form-hypothesis-test-repeat steps (choose your alternate permutation of steps of which you claim there in only one standard) referred to as scientific method? No.

But then, no need for that. Such scoping is irrational and would immediately destroy science, if strong but untestable inference from established tested knowns is excluded.

Or, you can throw away, for one, most of Quantum Physics, particularly the core Interpretations, i.e. Copenhagen, Everett, etc., etc.

This physics is not science? Do you want more examples?

Re:Call me strange but...

[Anonymous Coward]

In some developed countries, in any given year, there may be no children awaiting adoption at all.

I live in one of those countries. Here, it's quite okay to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or it's quite okay to be a single parent, so babies are rarely (if ever) abandoned or put up for adoption. It's pretty rare for both parents to die leaving orphans, too, and in those very rare cases, the child's grandparents are usually able to adopt the child immediately.

This leaves thousands of childless couples just as unable to adopt as they are unable to conceive children naturally. And no, they can't legally adopt children from other countries, without moving to those countries first.

Got any other clever 19th-century solutions for 21st-century problems?

Re:Or they could have just adopted

[Oswald McWeany]

Hardly fair to call the baby malicious names even if you disapprove of this medical technique. If you must; bash the doctor and the parents, but the baby is innocent in this.

Re:What selfish bastards

[Oswald McWeany]

There is more demand for adopting babies than babies available. It can be a challenge.

Now older kids... they get the short end of the stick, very few people want to adopt an older child; part of that is that they often come with emotional and mental challenges due to being orphans and passed around without a real home for much of their childhood... and not getting adopted adds to that.

If someone wants a baby, it may be easier to get medical help than adopt. You could say they should adopt one of the older children available for adoption instead... and that would be nice but some parent's aren't willing to adopt a troubled older child rather than start with a clean slate who they can mould into their own child.

Re:Why are we doing this?

[omnichad]

Stop being selfish (needing your "damaged" genes to propagate)

The damaged mitochondrial DNA was replaced completely - and will propagate the replaced DNA as well.

There are plenty of children that need to be adopted.

A baby is a child, but a child is not a baby.

Raise one of them, and accept they won't be propagating your genes but they will be propagating your values.

Depending on the age of the child, there's no guarantee you can change/undo what's already been done.

Re:What selfish bastards

[DarkOx]

Just increase immigration to compensate and better outcomes for all.

Maybe, or it could me a worse outcome for all. I won't talk about race, race has been more or less scientifically proven to be a not a real thing. While there may be some clustering toward the lower and upper bounds of the normal range for various characteristics in some populations its not big enough to be relevant.

Culture on the other hand is. Europe has had a huge problem with 'multiculturalism' you can't allow just any immigrants to show up and form ghettos. Its curcial to recognize and value ones one culture and probably ones national identity. I am all for legal immigration but the people who come here (speaking as an American) so do so because they want to be Americans, not ${former nationality}-Americans, no ${former continent}-Americans, or ${ethnic-population}-Americans but just plain simple Americans. I am all for freedom of religion and am okay with whatever they want to do inside their homes, or at their meeting place on ${Weekday} or if they don't want to ${food item} etc. In general though they need to join the rest of secular society, see the same movies, talk about the same sports, eat most of the same foods, date people no from their orign group, etc. Its simply wrong to place equal value on other cultures. Western civilization is superior its brought like to a dark world that other cultures frankly have not made lasting contributions to in terms of thought and ideas since before the fall of Rome.

'We' as individuals are not better than 'them' but 'we' as a culture certainly are. If 'they' want to immigrate grate as long as their desire is to be like us. If its to come here or to Western Europe just to live in Little-${whatver} but collect a bigger public assistance check than is available back home, no we should not want them and we should not let them come. Recently cultural appropriation has been branded a bad thing. Its not its great thing, imitation is the highest form of flattery! Cultural appropriation is in fact the correct and proper way to value other cultures. You recognize what is best about them and perhaps better than our traditional way and adopt it! That is the melting pot model, we take the best ideas from everywhere and made them our own! Everyone should be welcome who wants to add and integrate. Unfortunately this idea that we have to allow them to instead replace, in the name of respect has taken hold.