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Two Moms, One Dad Make a Healthy Baby Boy. Is It Ethical?

Read this to know who is eligible for a three-parent baby, the risks and if it’s ethical.

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Why limit yourself to two parents when you can have three?

There’ll be more money to borrow.

One day in August 2015, an American scientist, a Muslim couple from Jordan, and an anonymous donor went to a clinic in Mexico.

This is not the start of a racist joke – instead, these people made a baby and global headlines for the most startling, stunning and controversial in-vitro fertilisation technique used in modern times.

The doctor, Dr John Zhang, a US-based top fertility specialist foiled by stringent American regulations, took his tools to Mexico (where there are no rules) to alter human DNA into successfully delivering the world’s first three-parent baby. This newborn baby boy carries DNA from two mums and one dad.

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You might want to re-apply for high school – biology has undergone a major change. A healthy baby from three genetic parents is now a reality.

The Controversial Technique

Read this to know who is eligible for a three-parent baby, the risks and if it’s ethical.
Unlike many genetic anomalies, the bad cells that cause this deadly disease don’t live in the nuclear DNA – instead they hide in the mitochondria, which is always inherited from the mother. (Photo: iStock)

As complex as the human genome is, your options for getting DNA are limited to the good parts of your mum and dad. And even that happens rarely. You’re bound to get the junk bits thrown in here and there – like, I got ridiculously unshapely, small eyes from my mother and passed it on to my son.

But science is quickly changing all that.

99.8% of our DNA is inherited evenly from our moms and dads but that 0.2% comes from the mitochondria, the little batteries which supply power to the cells. This 0.2% passes only from the mother. But when something goes wrong in these powerhouses, the defects will also be passed directly from the mother to the baby. We’re not talking small, ugly eyes – it’s the critical illnesses like muscular dystrophy, heart anomalies, deafness, dementia, diabetes – pretty much anything you can imagine.

One in 6,500 babies is born with some sort of a serious defect in the mitochondria for which there is no cure.

Here comes Dr Zhang and his team to the rescue.

This Jordanian couple had worked for 20 years to start a family. The mother is a carrier for Leigh syndrome, which attacks the nervous system of the developing baby. The couple miscarried four times and lost two children (8 months and 6 years) because of the deadly neurological disease.

So Doctor Zhang scrapped out the faulty mitochondria from the Jordanian mother’s egg, inserted the remaining genetic material into the healthy donor egg, and then fertilised it with the sperm from the father and then implanted in the mother.

Nine months later, there was a healthy baby boy and no trace of Leigh syndrome.

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Disease-Free Babies. What's Not to Love About That?

Read this to know who is eligible for a three-parent baby, the risks and if it’s ethical.
Three-parent baby is a tremendous leap in science. (Photo: iStock)

A three-parent baby is a tremendous leap in science. For mitochondrial diseases, the first breakthrough came in the 1980s and nearly three decades later there is a technique which offers a cure.

This procedure is the only hope for the families who lose their children to debilitating mitochondrial birth defects for which there is no treatment or cure.

It’s also exciting for women with fertility issues, particularly above the age of 35. The leading cause of miscarriage among of advanced maternal age is “aging eggs”, in which the mitochondria is defective.

So why doesn’t the world approve?

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Facts of Friction: In a Biologically Extreme Procedure, You Can’t Predict Good or Bad When You Don’t Know the Rules

Read this to know who is eligible for a three-parent baby, the risks and if it’s ethical.
In February 2015, UK became the only place in the world to approve this technique. (Photo: iStock altered by The Quint)

Call it dangerous or momentous, but in February 2015, the UK became the only place in the world to approve this technique for testing on couples with an inherited mitochondrial mutation.

The procedure involves tweaking less than 1/10th of human genome. But does it matter if it is 1 percent or 10 percent or 100 percent? It’s a slippery slope.

The idea of three parents is horrifying for most people. And who knows whether the replaced genome goes rogue causing other diseases which are stuck with one’s lineage? Are we playing God and tweaking the human germ line? Will these gene editing experiments spin out of control and scientists soon start churning dragons, unicorns and tinkerers?

No one knows. No one knows because it has never been tried on humans before.

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Will It Allow Parents To Customise Children Even Before They Are Born?

Read this to know who is eligible for a three-parent baby, the risks and if it’s ethical.
What are your views on this procedure? (Photo: iStock altered by The Quint)
This type of genome editing is a giant leap from IVF. If and when it becomes commercially available, only the super rich will be able to afford it. It is horrendous to think that a particular section of society will be able to make super humans who will be smarter, better looking, more athletic, and what happens when the gap between the ordinary humans and these genetically modified species grows?

If you think the rich brats are precocious on Instagram, just wait till they become 7- feet tall, handsome, brainy, perfect little specimens in all walks of life.

Another big concern is that the mitochondria tweaks can be passed on to many generations and are heritable. So getting rid of cancer is the work of dreams, but tinkering with the genetic makeup of an entire race? Not so cool.

What are your views on this? Do you find it stunning or can’t stop thinking about the movie Gattacca? Leave your comments in the box below.

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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Topics:  IVF   Gene Editing 

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