IVF techniques may create babies with three parents
The Department of Health has announced plans to consult the public on whether a controversial IVF technique should be used to prevent some hereditary diseases from being transferred from women to their children.
The technique, which can only be used for research purposes under current legislation, involves transferring the parents' DNA into a donor egg, meaning a third party will leave a genetic imprint on any resulting child.
The technique is aimed at stopping diseases being passed down through families through mutated mitochondria, structures which supply power to cells.
However, the treatment has been said to raise serious ethical concerns since any children born using the technique will effectively have three, instead of two, genetic parents.
Dr. Calum MacKellar, Director of Research of the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, said: “You cannot just reduce a parent to the DNA provider since the definition of a biological parent is a person who participated in creating the life of a child.”
“In this case there are actually multiple biological parents who would all have special bonds with the prospective child. It is ‘who creates who’ that matters for the eventual parent-child bond, not the manner in which the child was created.
“The procedure has not been sufficiently thought through from an ethical perspective. The future child and the egg or embryo donor(s), who participated in creating this child, may eventually want to have a parent-child relationship”.
The technique has also been criticised for carrying unknown risks and potentially leading to the creation of children with serious abnormalities and defects.
Josephine Quintavalle, spokesperson for Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core), said: "IVF is meant to mimic nature but this is very, very far removed from nature. Even psychologically it's going to do harm because a child is going to realise what was done to create it. The greatest wisdom is sometimes just to say 'no'."
Details of the consultation procedure will be announced in early spring this year, and the consultation will then be followed by a Commons debate on the ethics of the issue. The Health Secretary has the power to lift the regulations the therapy could be trialled in humans within two to three years.
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