Britain sets out plans for first "3-parent" IVF babies

[Buster's Uncle]

Britain sets out plans for first "3-parent" IVF babies
Reuters
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent  4 hours ago



LONDON (Reuters) - Britain proposed new regulations on Thursday that would make it the first country in the world to offer "three-parent" fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on incurable diseases to their children.

The move was praised by doctors and but feared by critics, who say the technique will lead to the creation of genetically modified designer babies.

The technique is known as three-parent in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor.

The British plans come as medical advisers in the United States began a series of public hearings this week to consider whether there is scientific justification for allowing human trials of the technique.

The treatment, only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time involve implanting genetically modified embryos into women.

The process involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.

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. Mitochondria act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells.


"JUMPING THE GUN"

Announcing draft plans to allow the technique and launching a public consultation on them, Britain's chief medical officer Sally Davies said the proposed move would give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the chance to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders.

"It would also keep the UK in the forefront of scientific development in this area," she said in a statement.

But David King of the campaign group Human Genetics Alert accused the government of "jumping the gun" in laying out new laws before the treatments had been thoroughly investigated.

"If passed, this will be the first time any government has legalized inheritable human genome modification, something that is banned in all other European countries," he said in a statement. "Such a decision of major historical significance requires a much more extensive public debate."

Although some critics of mitochondrial transfer say it is akin to creating designer babies, replacing faulty mitochondria with healthy ones would not be genetic engineering in the usual understanding of the term. It would not make a child smarter, sportier, more attractive, or otherwise different from what his genome and environment would produce in the normal way.

Britain said the proposed new rules would be subject to public scrutiny and parliament's approval.

Many scientists, campaigners and medical experts welcomed the government's decision.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust international medical charity, urged the government to "move swiftly so that parliament could debate the regulations at the earliest opportunity and families affected by these devastating disorders can begin to benefit".

Peter Braude, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at King's College London, welcomed the move, saying: "It is true that genetic alteration of disease risk is an important step for society and should not taken lightly."

"However the proposed changes to the regulations ensure it will be limited to informed couples, who understand from sad personal experience the significant effects of their disease, and are best placed to balance the risks of the technology with the possibility of having children without mitochondrial disease," he added.

Scientists are researching several three-parent IVF techniques.

One being developed at Britain's Newcastle University, known as pronuclear transfer, swaps DNA between two fertilized human eggs. Another, called maternal spindle transfer, swaps material between the mother's egg and a donor egg before fertilization.

A British ethics panel review of the potential treatments in 2012 decided they were ethical and should go ahead as long as research shows they are likely to be safe and effective.

Because Britain is in the vanguard of this research, ethical concerns, political decisions and scientific advances are closely watched around the world.

Britain's public consultation on the draft regulations began on Thursday and was scheduled to run until May 21, 2014.


http://news.yahoo.com/britain-sets-plans-first-three-parent-ivf-babies-125918874--finance.html

[Buster's Uncle]

UK seeks public input on making 3-parent embryos
Associated Press
By MARIA CHENG  8 hours ago



LONDON (AP) — Britain is inviting the public to weigh in on draft rules allowing scientists to create embryos using DNA from three people — a man and two women — to prevent mothers from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases.

The latest public review should be the last step before politicians consider changing the law to let doctors offer the new fertilization techniques to patients. That would make Britain the first country in the world to allow the procedure to help people have children.

Britain's department of health said Thursday the government hopes to gather as many views as possible before introducing its final regulations. The proposed rules have been published online and the government is inviting people to respond by late May.

The public input isn't meant to debate whether the controversial techniques should be permitted. Instead, it concerns how they should be used to prevent relatively rare diseases caused by DNA defects in parts of the cell called mitochondria. Mistakes in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and mental retardation.

Mitochondria are energy-producing structures outside the cell's nucleus. The new techniques involve removing the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and inserting it into a donor egg, from which the nucleus DNA has been removed. That happens either before or after fertilization.

The resulting child ends up with the nucleus DNA from its parents, but the mitochondrial DNA from the donor. Scientists say the DNA from the donor egg amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryo's genes.

"Allowing mitochondrial donation would give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders," Dr. Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said in a statement.

Last year, Britain's fertility regulator said it found broad public support for the technology, but some concerns were raised about safety.

British law currently forbids altering a human egg or embryo before transferring it into a woman, and such treatments are only allowed for research purposes in a laboratory.

The department of health said it hopes legislation will be in place so patients can receive the treatment by the end of the year.

When mitochondrial donation was first reportedly used to create an embryo in a British laboratory in 2008, tabloid headlines declared scientists had created a child with three parents — two biological mothers and a father. But scientists said that was inaccurate, since there are only trace bits of genetic material from one woman.

If the procedure is approved by Parliament, experts say it would likely only be used in about a dozen British women every year.

"Genetic alteration of disease risk is an important step for society and should not be taken lightly," said Dr. Peter Braude, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at King's College London. But he said the proposed regulations would ensure the techniques would be limited to informed couples with personal experience of mitochondrial diseases.

Similar experiments are being conducted in the United States, where the embryos are not being used to produce children but only for research purposes. This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a meeting to discuss the techniques and genetic experts warned it could take decades to confirm their safety.

Critics have slammed it as a breach of medical ethics and said women at risk of passing on mitochondrial diseases already have other safe ways of having children, such as using donated eggs.

Human Genetics Alert, a secular group in Britain that opposes many genetics and fertilization experiments, has called the techniques a slippery slope that could lead to "a designer baby market."

"The techniques have not passed the necessary safety tests, so it is unnecessary and premature to rush ahead with legalization," said David King, the group's director.

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http://news.yahoo.com/uk-seeks-public-input-making-3-parent-embryos-202637912.html