There are about 50 known mitochondrial diseases, which are passed on in genes coded by mitochondrial (as opposed to nuclear) DNA. They range in severity, but for most there is no cure. It is therefore understandable that scientists and affected families want research into “three-parent embryo” techniques to go ahead. But there are good reasons for caution.
To begin with, this is not about finding a cure. It is about preventing people with mitrochondrial disease being born. These new technologies, even if they work, will do nothing for the thousands of people already suffering from these diseases, or for those who will be born with it in the future. And for affected couples there are already alternative solutions, including adoption and egg donation. Apart from this, I’m left with some big questions.
Will it work? This technology uses similar “nuclear transfer” techniques to those used in “therapeutic cloning” for embryonic stem cells – which has thus far failed to deliver, and animal-human cytoplasmic hybrids (“cybrids”). The wild claims made about cybrids by the biotechnology industry, research scientists, patient-interest groups and science journalists duped parliament into licensing animal-human hybrid research in 2008. Few today will remember Gordon Brown’s empty promises of cybrids offering “a profound opportunity to save and transform millions of lives” or how this research would be “an inherently moral endeavour that can save and improve the lives of thousands and over time millions of people”. But the measure was supported in a heavily whipped vote as part of the human fertilisation and embryology bill, now the HFE Act. Yet cybrids are now a farcical footnote in history. They have not worked. Ironically, it was in that same act of parliament that provision for this new research was also made
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