U.K. Says YES To Three Person Babies.

I watched the news on BBC. I was actually surprised that this procedure requires government permission and regulation. I thought it was falling under surrogate mother scenario already. Well, sort of.
Life will always bring new complexities to deal with.
 
I think it is mistaken to call this "three person baby". I have explained why here. In short it is because the third person only contributes to mtDNA, which represents only 0.0005% of the total DNA. And out of the 16,569 bases making up the mitochondrial DNA sequence, only a few will differ from the two other parents of the general population. The ultimate purpose of this procedure is to get rid of one or or few deleterious mtDNA mutations carried by the mother. It is just an indirect form of gene therapy.
 
LeBrok said:
I watched the news on BBC. I was actually surprised that this procedure requires government permission and regulation. I thought it was falling under surrogate mother scenario already. Well, sort of.
Life will always bring new complexities to deal with.
Click to expand...
Well the debate has raged for a while, all sorts of arguments were put forward [ many rather silly ones at that...no need to go into any of that now..and also Maciamo has linked to a thread already covering this issue]
It is good to, at last, have a ruling on it...:)
 
Maciamo said:
I think it is mistaken to call this "three person baby". I have explained why here. In short it is because the third person only contributes to mtDNA, which represents only 0.0005% of the total DNA. And out of the 16,569 bases making up the mitochondrial DNA sequence, only a few will differ from the two other parents of the general population. The ultimate purpose of this procedure is to get rid of one or or few deleterious mtDNA mutations carried by the mother. It is just an indirect form of gene therapy.
Click to expand...
I agree the term three parent/person babies is a poor description for this procedure. It is a term that has been used so frequently that it has become the term, albeit incorrect, the general public recognise. Perhaps, in retrospect, I could have used a better term in my own thread. Unfortunately I cannot do anything regarding the title now. Either a moderator or yourself may, if you like, place something such as mitochondrial donor procedure in brackets beside the title.
 
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