Two moms and a dad give birth to healthy ‘three-person baby’
By Muri Assuncao,
Daily News [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 04. 11. 2019
Oh baby!
A team of doctors from Greece and Spain announced the birth of a healthy baby boy who was conceived via an experimental form of in vitro fertilization (IVF). DNA from the egg of one woman was put into the egg of a donor woman, and then fertilized using the father’s sperm. The procedure, known as maternal spindle transfer, is one of three types of mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT).
The boy was born in Athens, Greece Tuesday weighing 6 pounds. Both the child and the 32-year-old mother are in good health, the doctors said in a statement.
A Spanish company called Embryotools announced the pregnancy in January following the first known trial of the procedure. The study enrolled 25 women under 40 who had been diagnosed with "infertility problems due to poor egg quality,” and who had at least two previous failed IVF attempts. Since the technique wasn’t approved in Spain, the company collaborated with a fertility clinic in Athens called the Institute of Life.
Dr. Panagiotis Psathas, president of the Institute of Life, celebrated the milestone.
“Today, for...
Related Articles
By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times | 10.20.2026
For the first time, scientists say they have used viruses designed by artificial intelligence to treat a human patient.
Researchers announced on Tuesday that they had administered the virus, known as a phage, to a patient suffering from a deadly...
By Noah Fromson, HealthLab | 10.19.2026
Gene therapy is no longer the future of medicine — it’s reality. Treatments that replace, silence or edit genes are already changing clinical care.
There are more than 6,000 rare genetic disorders but only a fraction currently have treatable targets...
By Roxanne Khamsi, The Atlantic | 10.16.2026
In recent months, news came out about several distressing cases that have underscored the risks of gene therapy, which delivers DNA to a patient’s cells to treat disease. All of these cases have one thing in common that’s not apparent...
By Rebecca Roberts, The Scientist | 10.11.2026
Heritable genome editing in human embryos is once again under intense scrutiny after the publication of an opinion piece in Trends in Genetics at the end of last month.1 In the paper, Cathy Tie, the founder and chief...