CGS-authored
The UK is moving closer to three-parent children after the fertility regulator informed the government that the public would back a controversial embryo treatment.
After testing the waters of public opinion, the head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Professor Lisa Jardine, feels that “there is broad support for permitting mitochondria replacement, to give families at risk of mitochondrial disease the chance of having a healthy child. Although some people have concerns about the safety of these techniques, we found that they trust the scientific experts and the regulator to know when it is appropriate to make them available to patients.”
The HFEA’s findings have been passed to the UK Department of Health, which will make recommendations to Parliament.
About 1 in 6,500 children is affected by a mitochondrial disease. Many of these are lethal; some lead to serious life-long complications. The solution favoured by the HFEA is a complex IVF procedure which involves removing the nucleus of an embryo and transferring it into an enucleated donor egg with healthy mitochondria.
A child born from this procedure would carry...
After testing the waters of public opinion, the head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Professor Lisa Jardine, feels that “there is broad support for permitting mitochondria replacement, to give families at risk of mitochondrial disease the chance of having a healthy child. Although some people have concerns about the safety of these techniques, we found that they trust the scientific experts and the regulator to know when it is appropriate to make them available to patients.”
The HFEA’s findings have been passed to the UK Department of Health, which will make recommendations to Parliament.
About 1 in 6,500 children is affected by a mitochondrial disease. Many of these are lethal; some lead to serious life-long complications. The solution favoured by the HFEA is a complex IVF procedure which involves removing the nucleus of an embryo and transferring it into an enucleated donor egg with healthy mitochondria.
A child born from this procedure would carry...