UK grapples with rules for 3 parent children

[NightSwimmer]

Technology now exists which will allow women with mitochondrial disorders to give birth to a healthy child. It involves implanting the prospective mother's nucleus DNA into an ovum provided by a healthy donor, and fertilizing the egg with the prospective father's sperm.


UK to consult on draft rules for 3-parent embryos

By MARIA CHENG
AP Medical Writer

LONDON (AP) -- Britain is starting a public consultation on rules allowing scientists to create embryos using DNA from three people - a man and two women - to prevent mothers from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases.

Britain's department of health said Thursday the consultation is intended to gather as many views as possible before introducing its final regulations.

The consultation isn't meant to debate whether the controversial techniques should be allowed, but simply how they should be used. The proposed rules have been published online and the government is inviting people to respond online or by mail by late May.

About one in 200 children every year in Britain is born with a mitochondrial disorder, faults in a cell's energy source that are contained outside the nucleus in a normal egg. Mistakes in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and mental retardation.

 

[connieb]

I heard on the news that The FDA is being asked to consider some human trials of related experiments or maybe just expand the trials. Someone has apparently been able to do this successful with Monkeys.

On one hand, I do feel like it is playing God, and I wonder how this will be used going forward. However, I also think it would be awesome to be able eventually rid our genetic code of illnesses as a result of "bad genes". And, would it be so bad to have a world populated with naturally healthy people? Or would it? Would that lead to some sort of weird domination between cultures and people. Its a very interesting topic.