Mitochondrial replacement techniques, Mexico and the legal unknowns
By César Palacios-González,
BioNews
| 04. 24. 2017
It is not every day that we can examine the details of the first use of a new reproductive technology. But the first live birth of a baby following the use of a mitochondrial replacement technique (MRT) in IVF last year gives a window into just this. The case (see BioNews 895) – with procedures carried out in both the US and Mexico – also raises legal questions.
The birth garnered a huge amount of attention after New Scientist magazine broke the news last September. MRT is a technique that aids women affected by a heritable mitochondrial disease to have genetically-related children free from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) disorders. These cause neuromuscular diseases that can have devastating effects, including heart and major organ failure, dementia, stroke, blindness, deafness, infant encephalopathy, and premature death.
From the moment the news broke until a paper detailing the case was published on 3 April this year (see BioNews 895), the only technical information we had about this experimental procedure came from three sources: a short conference abstract, press interviews...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 10.29.2026
At the beginning of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s blockbuster documentary You Can See Everything, Billy Evans (partner of Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes), says that they decided to do the film for one purpose: “radical transparency.” As they work on “Theranos 2.0,” Evans and Holmes want to show the public that she has been misunderstood –– painted as a liar and a fraud in the public imagination (and the courts) despite, as she claims in the...
By Jennifer Denbow, Guest Contributor
| 10.29.2026
Almost every day I am reminded that we are in the midst of a fertility panic. Whether it’s the Vice President exhorting Americans to have more babies or The New York Times running yet another story about the fertility cliff, fear about falling fertility rates is everywhere. While centrally concerned with declining rates of childbearing, Anna Louie Sussman’s new book, Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, is a welcome antidote to the panic.
Sussman has written...
By Jan Grue, The Guardian | 10.27.2026
For a very long time, I dreamed of being cured. I was born in 1981. I learned to walk early enough, but I stumbled and fell more easily than other children. My parents began to worry that something was wrong...
By staff, We Are Egg Donors | 10.21.2026
Michelle Lambrechts is a police officer and one-time egg donor in Belgium. She is also the founder of Ik Zit Met Een Ei, a Belgian nonprofit that advocates for egg donors. (The name is a Dutch play on words...
