Who Cares If a Baby Has Three Parents?

The creepily named Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom is
thinking about approving an in vitro fertilization (IVF) technique
aimed at curing mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria are tiny
powerplants with their own small geneomes that float by the
hundreds in the cytoplasm of cells. One in 2,500 children are born
with diseases associated with broken mitochondria.

To prevent children from being born with these diseases,
fertility specialists are proposing to
implement two procedures: (1) maternal spindle transfer and (2)
pro-nuclear transfer. In maternal spindle transfer genes are taken
from nucleus the egg of the prospective mother whose mitochondria
are defective and installed into a donor egg with healthy
mitochondria from which nuclear genes have been removed. The
reconstituted egg is then fertilized. In pro-nuclear transfer
involves taking nuclear material from a fertilized egg before the
nuclei of the sperm and egg have fused and installing it into a
donated enucleated egg.

Treating mitochondrial diseases in embryos actually began in the
United States in 2001 when researchers at a fertility clinic in New
Jersey transfered cytoplasm containing healthy mitochondria from
donor eggs into the eggs of women whose mitochondria were
defective. Before the regulators at the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) outlawed it, nearly 20 children were born as a
result of the procedure. In this case, healthy donor mitochondria
were mixed with defective maternal mitochondria.

The Independent
reports that researchers are now checking 17 of the
now-teenaged children to see how they are faring. That’s fine, but
Independent is suggesting that if researchers find something wrong
that would impact the decision to go forward with the similar
technique in Britain. It shouldn’t. From The
Independnent:

The findings of the follow-up will be keenly scrutinised by
Britain’s fertility watchdog, the Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority (HFEA), which is charged with making sure that
a similar technique called mitochondrial donation is safe.

“We do not know of any follow-up of children born as a result of
cytoplasmic transfer but we would certainly want to know the
results of such a follow-up,” said an HFEA spokesman.

As noted, the earlier cytoplasm transfer technique involved
mixing healthy and defective mitochondria; the new procedures do
not. Nevetheless, the results of the follow up study will surely be
of interest to people who want to avail themselves of these
techiques, but the decision to use these IVF techniques to prevent
mitochondrial diseases should be made by the would-be parents.
After all, they are the people who will reap the rewards and bear
the burdens of being parents.