Children with Three Parents

The latest salvo that reproductive biologists have fired at traditionalists since test-tube babies and surrogate motherhood has been the recent creation of babies with genetic material from three parents.

The scientific proof and benefits have been so compelling that UK has become the first country in the world to legalise it in 2015 despite several waves of protests and criticism from “conventional” moralists.

Alan Saarinen is 11 year old and looks and behaves like any other “normal” school girl of her age, playing sports and performing well in her class. She is however one of the rare 50 children in the world who has DNA from 3 parents: her father, mother and a third lady who contributed mitochondria to fortify the defective egg of her mother.
Before she was born, her parents had tried for a baby for 10 long years. Each time her mother Sharon had conceived through numerous IVF procedures, the pregnancy had ended up in a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage.
It was then that the doctors discovered that Sharon carried a rare genetic trait due to which the mitochondria, the small power batteries of her ovum, were weak and defective. As a result the embryo’s organs requiring most amounts of oxygen, such as heart, brain and muscles, did not develop and function properly.
Dr Jaques Cohen of New jersey, USA was the first to experiment with this technique that removes the cytoplasm containing the defective mitochondria of the diseased ovum and replace it with normal mitochondria obtained from an ovum from a healthy donor woman. The “corrected” ovum is then fertilised with the sperm in the laboratory as is done for test tube babies.
While 90% of DNA is present in the nucleus of human cells comprising 23000 genes, small amounts comprising 15 genes are also present in mitochondria.
The potential of this technique was quickly recognised in the United Kingdom that has legalised it, but funnily the USA has withheld permission for this procedure at present. The concerns of the American regulatory authorities and civil society is that a formal permission may make this technique go down the un-ethical slippery slope of “manufacturing” tailor-made babies in the laboratory.
New scientific developments in human reproductive biology always evoke sharp criticism and stiff resistance from ethics groups due to fear of potential misuse. Left to unscrupulous scientists, this technology can undoubtedly be used to produce “made-to-order” babies and in large amounts, almost like cloning animals.
But as of now frustrated couples undergoing treatment for infertility in British clinics are looking forward to have their own babies with this technique from 2016.