Britain first to approve of 'three-parent' IVF babies

[spaminator]

Britain first to approve of 'three-parent' IVF babies
Kate Kelland and Kylie MacLellan, Reuters
First posted: Tuesday, February 03, 2015 04:52 PM EST
LONDON - Britain voted on Tuesday to become the first country to allow a "three-parent" IVF technique which doctors say will prevent some inherited incurable diseases but which critics see as a step towards creating designer babies.
The treatment is known as "three-parent" in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor.
It is designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases, incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide.
After an emotionally charged 90-minute debate that some lawmakers criticised as being too short for such a serious matter, parliament voted 382 to 128 in favour of the technique, called mitochondrial donation.
The vote paves the way for a medical world first for Britain -- which along with the United States has been at the forefront of scientific research on the treatments -- but one that is fiercely disputed by some religious groups and other critics.
The process involves intervening in the fertilisation process to remove mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, and which, if faulty, can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.
Mitochondrial DNA is separate from DNA found in the cell nucleus and does not affect human characteristics such as hair or eye colour, appearance or personality traits.
"I wouldn't stand here and defend the concept of designer babies -- choosing the colour of the eyes and all the rest of it. This is about purely dealing with those terrible, terrible illnesses," opposition Labour lawmaker Andrew Miller, chair of parliament's science and technology committee, told the debate.
International charities, advocacy groups and scientists had urged Britain to pass laws to allow the treatment, saying it brought a "first glimmer of hope" for some families of having a baby who could live without suffering.
"We have finally reached a milestone in giving women an invaluable choice, the choice to become a mother without fear of passing on a lifetime under the shadow of mitochondrial disease to their child," Robert Meadowcroft, chief executive of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, said following the vote.
'RED LINE'
In an open letter to lawmakers, 11 international campaign groups, including the U.S. United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, described the condition as "unimaginably cruel".
"It strips our children of the skills they have learned, inflicts pain that cannot be managed and tires their organs one by one until their little bodies cannot go on any more," they wrote.
Lawmakers were given a free vote on the issue, and Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said the British leader had voted to support it, adding it was not "about playing God".
"He has a particular sympathy with those parents whose children are born with very serious illnesses, that in nearly all cases end their lives prematurely," the spokesman said, referring to Cameron's son Ivan who suffered from cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy and died aged six in 2009.
Proposed new laws allowing the treatments to be carried out in Britain still have to be approved by the upper house, which commentators expect to endorse parliament's support.
Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility clinic and a reproductive ethicist, urged the scientists developing the techniques to continue "to educate and reassure those who continue to have anxieties".
The Bishops Conference of England and Wales said the Church opposed the destruction of human embryos as part of the process and hoped treatments for mitochondrial disease could be found.
"The human embryo is a new human life with potential; it should be respected and protected from the moment of conception and not used as disposable material," Bishop John Sherrington said in a statement.
Other critics say the technique will lead to the creation of genetically modified "designer babies", with Conservative lawmaker Fiona Bruce saying it would amount to letting "the genie out of the bottle".
"Where will it lead? The answer has to be that we stop here. The answer has to be that we say this is a red line in our country, as in every other country in the world, that we will not cross," she said during the debate.
Britain first to approve of 'three-parent' IVF babies | World | News | Toronto S

 

[Blackleaf]

Thats our modern "trendy", "progressive" MPs for you.

It's time to clear them all out on 7th May and elect a Ukip government.

There’s an ethical debate to be had about ‘three-parent babies’ but nobody seems keen

Coffee House
Melanie McDonagh
2 February 2015
The Spectator
74 comments

There doesn’t seem much doubt about which way the Commons vote today on ‘three-parent babies’ will go, does there? A combination of dismissive metaphors, characteristically British sentimentalism and morally astigmatic scientists seems likely to do the trick. Today in the Telegraph, Lord Winston, IVF supremo, opined that the thing was no more problematic than a blood transfusion. In the Times, Matt Ridley dismissed the importance of mitochondrial donation (the ‘third parent’ bit) as no more important to us than our gut bacteria. A Daily Mail journalist on the Westminster Hour last night brusquely observed that the technique was rather like changing a spare tyre. Add to the mix a photogenic would-be beneficiary of the technique in the papers, plus the intervention of the Catholic and Anglican bishops against the proposal, and hey, the issue is now science (and compassion) versus religion. And we know how that’ll go.

Yet the technique does raise real and important ethical issues. It involves creating two embryos, from one of which the nucleus is removed, in order to make way for the nucleus of the other. So, in cases where the mother suffers from a mitochondrial disorder, this means her mitochondria can be excluded from her future offspring by implanting her nucleus into the embryo of the third parent. And although we may be talking about a tiny minority of the future baby’s DNA – 37 out of about 2,000 genes – they’re not entirely insignificant. They govern the efficiency with which our metabolisms function, or how we process energy, which is rather an important element of our physiology. Besides which, mitochondria make up about half of the biological make up of a cell. What’s more the nucleus is not some sort of separate entity from the rest of the fertilised ovum; it communicates with the mitochondria and vice versa. So the spare tyre analogy doesn’t work. The contribution of the third parent matters.

What was interesting when I came to write about this subject a couple of years ago was how reluctant distinguished scientists were to talk on the record about their reservations. Expressing doubts about the ethics or efficacy of the technique would brand them as being on the pro-life end of the spectrum, which isn’t a career-enhancing option. The European Convention on Human Rights allows modifications to the human genome only if its aim is ‘not to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendants’. But that’s just what this bill is designed to introduce: modifications to the germ line of a child for generations to come. Lord Winston does nail part of the objection to the technique – namely, it instrumentalises a human embryo for the benefit of others – but he dismisses this out of hand, as you’d expect from someone in his line of business. But we shouldn’t buy into one emotive argument, that this would save children from lives of great suffering: it doesn’t actually benefit any living children at all, so much as allowing the creation of other children who would be free of mitochondrial disease.

It would be nice if this debate were indeed honestly conducted, as being about the genetic modification of the human embryo. But given the sentimentalism and muddled moral thinking of Brits, including legislators, I don’t expect that to cut any ice at all.

PS It doesn’t help the debate that the CofE managed to field such a useless spokesman to articulate concerns about the bill in the person of the Bishop of Swindon, Dr Lee Rayfield. Observing on the Today programme this morning that ‘this was not the Church of England’s finest hour,’ Rayfield said that their worries were simply about the safety of the procedure: ‘if the safeguards are there, the Church of England will be behind this.’ Really? Granted there are safety concerns, including the possibility that individuals born from the technique may be more prone to cancer, as a report in the Telegraph suggests, but the real issue is one of principle. It’s about the creation of a genetically modified human being, even if the genetic modification is all to do with the creation of babies free of mitochondrial disease. But however sad the plight of people with this condition who want children of their own, it doesn’t trump the argument that creating a three-parent baby is a drastic step, which hasn’t been approved by any other administration anywhere in the world, for good reason. Modifying the germline for generations to come isn’t just tinkering at the edges. Shame the CofE couldn’t come up with a bishop with enough gumption to say so.



There's an ethical debate to be had about 'three-parent babies' but nobody seems keen » Spectator Blogs

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

This tracks natural fertilisation in Britain, which involves an English woman, her husband, and the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, or Muslim father of the baby.

 

[Blackleaf]

The Paddies, Jocks, Taffies and Muzzies are all subsidy-junky, workshy drains on the economy. England would boom greatly without them. We would do well to shed them all off and let them fend for themselves.