From The Sun in UK
The breakthrough gives hope of healthy children to couples with genetic disorders in their families. It also offers the prospect of eradicating fatal genetic diseases. But the procedure - dubbed three person IVF - sparked controversy last night. Researchers at Newcastle University set out to prevent damaged DNA in mitochondria - the "batteries" that power cells - from being passed on to offspring. Controversial ... kids would have DNA from three people. They removed nuclei from the sperm and egg of affected couples, leaving behind the mitochondria. The nuclei were put into one of the fertilised eggs left over after other women had IVF treatment. This egg had its nuclei removed - but retained its healthy mitochondria. Advertisement Eighty embryos were created but destroyed after eight days. Lead researcher Professor Doug Turnbull said: "What we've done is like changing the battery on a laptop." The scientists would need a special licence to culture embryos for longer periods and the procedure would currently be illegal in IVF clinics. One in 200 British children born each year has a genetic mutation and some are fatal. But opponent Josephine Quintavalle, of the anti-cloning group CORE, said: "They are creating a child with two mothers. We have to find better ways to cure diseases." Read more:
5 comments:
For people who don't see a problem with destroying embryos that gave not been implanted, than this would be a pretty good way to " cure disease" .
For those that do have a problem with it, this is not not for them.
Since scientists agree that life begins at conception, it would be more accurate to say that if you have not problem with destroying life at an early stage etc....and they were not curing diseases...they were creating a new life with DNA from three people. I wonder who gets custody of this child. Is it shared three ways...
Actually Susie, scientists don't agree that life begins at conception, as prolifers like to claim. One of those that they quote regularly as the authority on embryology, Scott Gilbert, explains that it can be argued that life begin at any of 4 different points. It is not a matter of just science. Science does not hold the answer. Personal and religious beliefs come into play.
Let me know if you need me to show you what he has to say on the matter and I will.
As for who holds custody? That's extraneous to this. Something to be worked out, just as it is the case of any parental situation. And hey, if two parents are generally better than one... well lucky kids that has three!
Oh, and by the way, it could be argued that they are curing a disease. If a couple would otherwise have a child with a disease and this avoids that then yes, I can see this would be curing a disease by not having it start in the first place!
thanks again anonymous for reading the blog and commenting. I must disagree that determining when life begins is a religious and personal belief. Even in high school biology textbooks in public schools they state that life begins at conception.
Here are some quotes from scientists.. I don't know if any of them are religious or not but they were speaking as scientists. They may also be advocates of abortion but they were answering a scientific question. The crux of Roe v Wade is that the woman has dominion over the life in her womb not that it is not life.
Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
"Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence."
Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, "I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."
Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: "To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous."
Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling _Roe v. Wade_, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."
Professor Eugene Diamond: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."
Sure Susie, and there are other scientists that disagree that life begins at conception, like I said....
And when Dr. McCarthy de Mere, suggests that"The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception", he is not speaking as a scientist. Science certainly does not determine when personhood begins. What he is stating there is his own opinion, as determined by his personal and possibly.
religious beliefs.
Like most people, I certainly do not put the same value on an embryo in a petri dish as I would a newborn, a child, an adult and elderly person, etc. But I can appreciate that there are some people that would. And that is why IVF and ESCR are not for them.
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