Scientists seek to create ‘three-parent’ babies
What on Earth for, you may ask?
The aim is ultimately to prevent children from inheriting genetic diseases caused by mutations in DNA housed by their mitochondria – components of cells which produce energy.
In other words, because they can.
The procedure would involve fertilising a woman’s egg by in-vitro fertilisation outside the body and transplanting the fertilised nucleus to an egg from another woman which has had its nucleus removed.
Any child born following implantation of such an embryo would have cells containing a nucleus with genes from both parents, and mitochondria from a woman other than their mother.
Normally, mitochondria are inherited from the mother via the egg. Mitochondrial mutations are more prevalent in older women, so using a young woman as the egg cytoplasm donor would reduce the risk of inheriting mitochondrial diseases.
A reproductive technology that humanity desperately needs.
Show Trial #17
While women were liberated under Stalin, it must be noted that many females persist in reactionary crimes. These must be punished with the same severity as crimes committed by men. Today’s Show Trial features female warmongers, capitalists, and imperia…
Funny, I haven’t read any studies that older women have a higher rate of mitochondrial mutations than younger ones.
HELL, I have seen ANY medical studies on mitochondrial mutations period.
I guess this is another subtle way of letting women know their bodies are not any good after what, 35, 40, 45? What do they consider older anyway?
Michele: It’s been known for years that women over 35 have a higher risk of producing children with certain types of birth defects. Ask any OB/GYN. The older you get the more likely you are to produce flawed eggs. Men’s sperm also tends to have more problems as they age.
It strikes me that if a technology like this can help someone give birth to healthy babies, that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?
It is.
I’m reminded that I once worked with a person who helped set up a database for a large state’s social services division. Specifically interesting was the complexity of the whole “parent” module.
You’d think that, Woman A plus Man B = Child C.
Now with moments thought I’m sure the case where Man B might be unknown, or not the husband of record, is thought of as a reasonable complexity.
Now, young computer DB padawan, how do we correctly record the *twin* children of Woman A by two different men, neither her husband, and (modestly relevant by this time) each of different race from husband.
And that, was apparently _not_ the most complex scenario case.
The mind boggles at what nature can come up with.
“Michele: It’s been known for years that women over 35 have a higher risk of producing children with certain types of birth defects. ”
Yes, they can – but women over 35 tend to be married to men who are also over 35, and the rate at which mutations occur in the sperm of aging men is exponentially larger than that in the eggs of women.
And that said, this technology would retain the vast majority of dna of the older woman, taking only the mitochondrial dna of the younger. It was not so long ago that geneticists believed that mitochondrial dna was inherited exclusively from the female line, that large areas of the genetic code were “junk dna” and did not fully understand how powerful RNA is….
But they want to produce human beings from a combination of two eggs? Remember that this combined egg would result in a fertile human being who would pass along the recombined dna to their children as well.
I was dead serious when I said the reason was “because they can”.
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