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...

[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]

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.

"First"? This was done in the 1990s.

[jeffb (2.718)]

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...