Eight children are reported to have been born in the United Kingdom with DNA from a mother and a father – and an additional person. The method has been justified as preventing the risk of inheriting life-threatening genetic diseases from parents.
The intervention technique is described in British media as groundbreaking and became possible after the UK changed legislation in the area in 2015. The UK’s fertility authority granted the first license in 2017 to a clinic at Newcastle University, where doctors were the very first to use the technique that reportedly aims to help women with mitochondrial diseases give birth to healthy children through artificial insemination.
Four boys and four girls, including a pair of identical twins, have been born through the method technically called mitochondrial donation therapy. The children currently show no signs of the mitochondrial diseases they risked inheriting. Another pregnancy is still ongoing.
Third person’s genes are passed on
“As parents, all we ever wanted was to give our child a healthy start in life. After years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope – and then it gave us our baby … we’re overwhelmed with gratitude. Science gave us a chance“, says the mother of one of the girls according to the British liberal newspaper The Guardian.
The mitochondria affected by the treatment constitute 0.02 percent of human total DNA, which is why the researchers behind the technique do not fully embrace the description of the technique as giving rise to “three parents”. At the same time, mitochondria have their own genetic code and girls born with the help of this technique – and who carry the healthy third person’s/donor’s mitochondria – will pass on these genes to their potential children as well.