Now it Takes Three to Tango

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Science wriggled one step closer to science fiction this week when researchers from Newcastle University in Britain developed five-day-old embryos using different genetic materials from three parents.

Affecting approximately one in 6,500 people, damaged mitochondria can cause cell death in a variety of body systems, causing problems such as seizures, blindness, deafness, stroke, heart problems, and kidney failure. The problems usually become apparent in early childhood.

The British team created a process by which genetic material from one embryo with damaged mitochondria was exchanged with that of another embryo with no mitochondrial defects.

The hoped-for result was a healthy embryo with the DNA from two parents, inserted into cells from a third "parent," but without the genetic defect.

Though some news outlets reported that the team had successfully inserted DNA from two parents with disease into another donor egg from a healthy woman, this is incorrect.

Said professor Patrick Chinnery, who worked with the Newcastle team, "There are still a number of scientific issues we've got to resolve, in terms of efficiency, and in terms of whether we can do this in eggs rather than in other embryos."

The study involved creating a "three-parent embryo" by using two embryos that had been rejected for use in IVF treatments.

Their work was considered a success, though none of the new, resulting embryos were allowed to develop past five days.

The scientists say that the eventual goal is to transfer the technique to fertility treatments, to help couples with genetic diseases have healthy children.

Said Chinnery to reporters, "We believe that from this work, and work we have done on other animals that in principle we could develop this technique and offer treatment in the forseeable future that will give families some hope of avoiding passing these diseases to their children."

While the method has been used before in lab animals, this research marks the first time that such a technique has been used on humans and has been allowed to develop so far.

The study is especially controversial because typical research involving embryonic modification is done to extract master stem cells, which can be developed into any tissue of the body, not to grow actual human babies.

And not everyone thinks that this is such a great idea. Josephine Quintaville, a representative from Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a pro-life group, told reporters, "We should not be messing around with the building blocks of life. To experiment on a human child in this way is absolutely unforgivable."