3-Parent Babies Could Be Conceived in UK Next Year

Wednesday, March 30. 2011

3-Parent Babies Could Be Conceived in UK Next Year

Yes. Thats right a three genetic parent baby maybe on the way in the UK within the next year. Why would scientists want to engineer an embryo with the genetic material from 3 people? To "prevent" the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at fertilization. In the cytoplasm of our mother's egg are mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA called mtDNA. We inherit our mtDNA only from our mother because sperm's mitochondria are dumped at conception. There are genetic mutations that cause disease in mtDNA and a woman with a such a mutation cannot help but pass this mutation on to her children.

This is where the three parent embryos come in. Here is how it works. Scientists took the nucleus out of an embryo had a mutation in its mtDNA and put it into an embryo whose mtDNA was normal, after removing the nucleus of that embryo of course. The result is one embryo with the nuclear DNA from its mother and father and the mtDNA from another embryo and its mother. Confused? Here is a simplified diagram that I made from the one in the Nature paper. (A zygote is the single celled embryo that results from fertilization.)

So scientists created 2 embryos with IVF, destroyed one human embryo by removing its nuclear DNA and added the DNA from the other human embryo to make a third recombinant embryo with the mtDNA from one woman and the nuclear DNA from another woman and a man.

Currently it is against the law in the UK to implant genetically engineered embryos such as these but as I predicted authorities are ready to chuck the law in order to start on this right away. From Fox News:

Babies with three biological parents could be conceived in the UK as early as next year, after the British Health Secretary invited scientists to advise whether he should approve a new IVF technique for preventing severe inherited diseases, The (London) Times reported Friday.

Andrew Lansley asked the fertility watchdog to convene an expert panel to consider the safety and effectiveness of the procedure, the first step towards possible approval.

The therapy, developed by a team led by Professor Doug Turnbull at Newcastle University, is designed to replace faulty versions of structures called mitochondria inherited from mothers.

Mitochondrial failure can cause fatal liver, neurological and heart conditions.

The treatment involves merging DNA from two fertilized eggs, so that malfunctioning mitochondria are replaced by healthy ones. As mitochondria contain small amounts of DNA, a child conceived that way would inherit genetic material from three parents, though 99.8 percent would be from the mother and father.

It is illegal to place embryos created that way into the womb, but the 2008 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act gave the Health Secretary the power to rescind the ban without primary legislation.

If Lansley approves clinical use of the therapy, his decision is likely to be put to a vote in both Houses of Parliament. If the ban is lifted, Turnbull could apply for a license to treat patients.

Notice they don't really mention that two embryos are destroyed to make a third. Who needs details anyway?

The ban on implanting genetically modified embryo was in place to prevent the implantation of embryos that were cloned with rabbit, mouse or cow eggs but it looks like the UK is willing to toss that out like yesterday's lunch.

And while curing genetic disease with gene therapy is a laudable goal, the Catholic Church teaching is clear that this is not the way to do it. We cannot sacrifice two embryos to make a healthy third. We Catholics could embrace such a genetic therapy to cure mitochondrial disease if life did not need to be created, manipulated and destroyed in a dish. When the day comes that we can fix this without creating and destroying life in a lab, we Catholics can jump on that genetic engineering train.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Genetic Engineering at 20:45 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

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Why don't these scientists work with lab animals instead of human babies? The science can advance without the destruction of human embryos, and hopefully eventually they will learn how to correct mitochondrial mutations without destroying human life. So why the rush to use life-destroying experimental methods on human life?

Of course, I know the answer...money. There's money to be made by giving people designer babies. Lots and lots of money.

God gave us minds to use, such that we are able to explore things like this. But He also gave us the ability to recognize right and wrong (well, I guess technically the knowledge of good and evil was taken when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit). There are moral ways to advance our knowledge, which can lead to moral treatments for ailments.

#1 Matthew A. Siekierski (Homepage) on 2011-03-31 04:44 (Reply)

This was done in animals first. But on a very limited basis. The fertility industry has always had a "try it first, then see if it harms the resulting child later" attitude. This is just an extension of that. IVF has been human experimentation from the very beginning.

#1.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2011-03-31 08:03 (Reply)

Why limited testing? It would seem to me (as an IT guy, not a scientist) that proof of concept and improvement of the processes would be better done on animals. Without the moral issues involved in using human embryos, wouldn't costs be less and avenues for funding be greater?

#1.1.1 Matthew A. Siekierski (Homepage) on 2011-04-01 04:58 (Reply)

"...why the rush to use life-destroying experimental methods on human life?"

Sharon Bernardi. Seven children, dead from a disease that could have been prevented using this technology.

For those of us who don't see a single cell as a person - and this is a perfectly logical, ethically justifiable position for someone without a religious background, as well as for many people who are religious - the prevention of suffering and death through the destruction of one cell is not just acceptable, but morally compelling.

Rebecca, I share your concerns about the potential long-term health impacts of this approach. However, the evidence we have so far suggests it is safe, and (as is so often the case in medicine) at some stage the benefits of preventing diseases outweigh the uncertainty.

#1.2 Daniel MacArthur (Homepage) on 2011-04-01 02:53 (Reply)

This wouldn't help children already born. Something like this would have resulted in different children being born, and prevented Sharon's son Edward from being born at all. It doesn't treat the disease, or prevent it from developing in a particular person.

But research into what activates portions of the mitochondrial DNA could lead to treatment.

#1.2.1 Matthew A. Siekierski (Homepage) on 2011-04-01 05:07 (Reply)

That just seems like semantics to me. With this technique, a child would have been born who was genetically related to both parents, and free of the disease. Net benefit: a child is born who doesn't suffer from a horrible, lethal mitochondrial disease. Net cost: one cell floating in a dish - which would never have developed into a child anyway - had its nucleus scooped out.

Research into treatments for mitochondrial disease should obviously be pursued. But this technology is available right now. From my perspective, not using it would be like stopping cancer patients from having chemotherapy because better treatments with fewer side-effects will eventually be available.

#1.2.1.1 Daniel MacArthur (Homepage) on 2011-04-01 05:34 (Reply)

Semantics is calling a zygote "one cell floating in a dish". Semantics is saying that the zygote isn't a person because it hasn't reached some arbitrary level of development.

And this isn't like treating cancer. This doesn't treat a patient. (The mother is not the patient being treated.) It prevents two lives from continuing to develop by ripping them both apart and recombining them into a single new patient. The original patient (supplying the intact nucleus) ceases to exist, as does the other "donor" zygote.

#1.2.1.1.1 Matthew A. Siekierski (Homepage) on 2011-04-01 09:59 (Reply)

Nice to hear from you Daniel!

I totally agree that genetic engineering to cure mitochondrial disease is appropriate and a worth while goal. But I think it is wrong to sacrifice any human organism, regardless of the level of development, to attain that goal.

You may not think that a zygote is worth anything but it is a organism of our species. I think, as do many non-Catholics as well, that saying some human organisms are protected while others are not just because of some arbitrary point in development is dangerous. I could go on and on forever [and have ;)] on how that makes us all look like harvestable biological material.

#1.2.2 Rebecca Taylor on 2011-04-01 10:50 (Reply)

Hi Rebecca,

I'm loath to have a conversation where we just talk past each other - so I'll just say that while I accept that your views on the status of zygotes are perfectly sensible and rational from certain starting assumptions, I don't share the same assumptions. And while I'm sensitive to the slippery slope argument, I think there are perfectly reasonable ways to stop actual people from being dehumanised while still accepting that a cell's destruction can be justified to ensure that a person free from a crippling disease is brought into the world.

#1.2.2.1 Daniel MacArthur (Homepage) on 2011-04-04 16:03 (Reply)

I just think it is wonderful to be able to have a conversation about difficult and emotional topics without name calling and nastiness. It seems it is a lost art these days. So thank-you for that Daniel, you may have single handedly restored my faith in humanity!

I respect that you do not place as much value as I do on a zygote. I also realize that my view in the minority these days. I just fear what will happen if that ban on the implantation of genetically modified embryos is lifted in the UK. (At least the UK has one. The US won't regulate the fertility industry at all.)

Society does not have a clear understanding of the difference between gene therapy and genetic enhancement. Without that, genetically modifying embryos and implanting them is going to careen out of control and fast. I understand that all of this is done with good in mind, but if we do not have an inherent respect for the embryo (every embryo) and the children that they will grow into, I think embryos (and the children they grow into) will be marginalized and manipulated and not always for the better.

#1.2.2.1.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2011-04-05 09:09 (Reply)

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