fxashun

Embryo with 3 parents created-Health/Sci-The Times of India
NEW DELHI: For procreation, it has always taken two to tango. But scientists from the UK's Newcastle University have taken reproductive biology where it has never gone before - creating a human embryo from three parents, two women and a man.

The scientists believe the technique will help prevent women with diseases of the mitochondria - tiny batteries within each cell that provide energy - from passing on the defects to their children. Mitochodrial DNA is carried from mother to offspring and faults in it can cause about 50 known diseases, some of which lead to disability and death.

Researchers from Newcastle University presented their findings at a medical conference at the weekend, a university spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

According to reports in the British media, the Newcastle team has created 10 successful three-parent embryos from couples at risk of mitochondrial disease. The embryos were fertilized through the conventional in vitro method.

After a day, each embryo was emptied of its pronuclei - structures that contain the sperm and egg which are still separate at this stage. These pronuclei were inserted into an emptied egg from a second woman with healthy mitochondria.

In this way, the team created embryos which contained genetic material from the original parents but had healthy mitochondria from the donor woman.

The embryos grew normally till the fifth day, after which they were terminated.

If the embryos were to be implanted back into the mothers, they would have created the world's first genetically modified babies. The team's experiments with mice have produced healthy offspring.

Professor Patrick Chinnery, a member of the Newcastle team, was quoted by the BBC website as saying: "We believe from this work, and work we have done on other animals that in principle we could develop this technique and offer treatment in the foreseeable future that will give families some hope of avoiding passing these diseases to their children."

We're gonna kill ourselves from the inside out.

Could this be an excuse for polygamy?

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waitingtables

No, not for polygamy. Just another two-sided coin. Playing God, and curing diseases. Each comes with it's own set of pluses and minuses. Soon there will be two classes of people, genetically engineered perfect, attractive, geniuses and regular old poor people having babies the old fashioned way. So you have the ugly average intelligence people, and the designer lab created perfect people. It is kind of scary.

forester814

We already have five-parent babies, so three isn't that big of a deal.

The egg donor, the sperm donor, the surrogate mother, and the adoptive parents.
Five.

fxashun

You obviously didn't read the article.

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waitingtables

Yes, five parents, but not biologically.

forester814

Actually, I did. It was very interesting.
My point was simply that 5 is more than 3.

fxashun

But 3 biologic parents is against any species on the planet. 5 legal parents just shows how our legal system is a pile of crap when it tries to absorb all the F'd up situations humans can create. Such as 15% humans and 3 biologic parents.

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garysher

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forester814

True, but I can't say that automatically makes it a bad thing.
Science has done us a lot of good when it comes to reproduction.

I am sure this will need to be studied and debated quite a bit, but they did that with The Pill and genetic testing too. Both controversial at the time, but generally accepted as a good thing today.

fxashun

The Pill was considered killing. Genetic testing can lead to eugenics. But creating human hybrids is a totally different level of perversion. And that's coming from a person kept alive by a dialysis machine.

Nuclear power isn't a bad thing until someone drops the weapon offshoot of the technology onto your country. Ask the Japanese.

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