The regulations for techniques to create three- and four-parent babies were published in late 2014, with MPs and Peers due to vote early in 2015 on allowing the two procedures, Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST) and Pro-Nuclear Transfer (PNT).
MST involves replacing the nucleus in a healthy donor egg with the nuclear DNA from the prospective mother – resulting in a child with DNA from three parents. PNT creates a child from four different individuals: a chromosomal mother, a chromosomal father, an egg mother and a sperm father.
If legalised, the UK would become the only country in the world to permit the two techniques.
Not related?
The regulations, which apply to the whole of the UK, state that the woman donating her egg would not be related to the resulting child. Any child born would have no right to information about the donor.
Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert, raised concerns about the techniques: ‘This is high-tech medicine at its worst and most unnecessary. Medical researchers are crossing the crucial ethical line that will open the door to designer babies based on scientific misinformation and ignoring majority public opposition’.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015 could come into force in October 2015 if Parliament approves them.
The New Scientist magazine changed its stance on three-parent babies, warning that the UK needs to have a ‘serious debate’ about the ethics and safety of three-parent babies, saying: ‘We may have underestimated the influence that mitochondria have’.
