Should Three People be Allowed to Make a Baby?

For more than a decade, scientists have been developing a fertility technique that involves combining DNA from three parents to make a child. The technique, which has yet to be tested on humans, aims to help women who suffer from mitochondrial disease conceive a baby to which they are genetically related. But as the science inches closer to the human trial stage — some say that might happen in as little as two years — the scientific debate surrounding "three-parent babies" grows louder, and more polarized.

Just last week, for instance, a British scientific panel decided that the fertility technique is "not unsafe" for patients who suffer from mitochondrial disease. The decision hints that British government may soon amend legislation that currently bars the procedure, called mitochondrial replacement (MR), from entering human trials. Yet an American scientific panel reached a different conclusion in February when it decided that the science supporting MR was inconclusive and lacking. Thus, the first baby with three genetic parents will likely be British, and the two countries that are seriously considering...