‘Three-Parent Babies’ Are Now Legal in the United Kingdom

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 25, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The United Kingdom is the first country to permit the creation of babies using DNA from three people so that mothers don’t pass certain diseases to their children.

The bill authorizing this approach was passed earlier this month by the House of Commons and received final approval Tuesday from the House of Lords, the Associated Press reported.

The procedure is meant to prevent children from inheriting defects in the mother’s mitochondria, which are the energy-producing structures outside a cell’s nucleus. Mitochondrial defects can cause diseases such as muscular dystrophy, severe muscle weakness and heart, kidney and liver failure.
In the procedure, an egg is altered before being transferred into a woman. Nucleus DNA is removed from the egg of a mother and placed into a donor egg from which the donor DNA has been removed. This can be done before or after an egg is fertilized, the AP reported.
The egg would then have nucleus DNA from its parents but mitochondrial DNA from the donor, which would account for less than 1 percent of the embryo’s genes.
This is a “monumental moment” in efforts to fight muscular dystrophy, according to Robert Meadowcroft, chief executive of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.
“This result will be life-changing for many women living with mitochondrial disease, giving them the precious chance to bear unaffected children, removing the condition from a family line and reducing the numbers faced with its devastating effects,” he said in a statement, theAP reported.
Critics say this approach crosses a fundamental scientific boundary because the genetic changes will be passed on to future generations.
At a U.S. Food and Drug Administration meeting last year, scientists said it could take decades to determine if this type of procedure is safe, the AP reported.