Three-Parent Babies Destined for the U.S.?

I have previously discussed how lawmakers in the United Kingdom voted in favor of three parent babies.  Yet, things are moving at a much slower pace in the United States as scientists debate the safety and ethics of trying the experimental technique in humans. 

Although it is a long way from any fertility clinic, it could work as follows: Doctors would extract an egg from the mother carrying bad mitochondria. They would remove the nucleus from that egg, and with it, the genetic traits mom would pass down to her kids. Then, they would implant that nucleus inside another egg donated by a different woman, an egg with healthy mitochondria. Fertilize that egg with dad’s sperm, and in theory, you would end up with a baby free of mitochondrial disease. But, because mitochondria do contain their own DNA, any child produced this way would inherit a small fraction—far less than one percent—of their DNA from that second woman. That’s why some have called this technique three-parent in vitro fertilization.

Many skeptics of this procedure think manipulating embryos to this extent could put medicine on the slippery slope toward designer babies.  Paul Knoepfler, a UC Davis School of Medicine professor believes the U.K. vote was premature.  He said this technique would create genetically modified humans and he worries that using it in as an attempt to stamp out mitochondrial disease could lead to equally bad developmental disorders or miscarriage.  He also points out that any unexpected problems in children born this way could become hereditary.  “We’re talking about permanently changing human DNA.  And so I think it is reasonable to think about how this could have repercussions for many generations in the future.” 

See David Wagner, Is U.S. Ready for ‘Three-Parent’ Babies?, KPBS, Feb. 16, 2015.