Three-Person IVF -- Miracle or Mistake?
The BBC is reporting today on the subject of potential three-person IVF. They make the clear point that no DNA-determing-factors would come from the third donor – the point is to correct genetic defects that a mother’s egg would carry. To do this, they would remove the nucleus from a donor egg (removing the part of the egg that makes it essentially from that person) and replace it with the nucleus from the mother’s egg, thus making her traits the ones passed to the child. The BBC article likens it to ‘replacing a battery’.
Of course developments like this always cause public controversy. Dolly the cloned sheep upset some people terribly. There were people who felt embryo screening was wrong in the very early days. Many people even now avoid genetically modified foods. So how would the general public feel about three-person IVF?
I can remember discussions of the first test tube baby. Can you believe that Louise Brown, that very baby, was over 30 years ago? Some people were opposed to the process because of religious reasons. And at the time, there were questions about whether these test tube babies would, themselves, be able to reproduce once they were grown up. But, in fact both Louise and her sister, also an IVF baby, have children of their own, conceived without IVF.
And today, IVF is such a ‘normal’ part of our world that no one questions it, beyond having the money to pay for it.
The reality is that, on the front end, we often can’t know what the outcomes will be, or how wonderful or disastrous the results. We have to decide based on the information given us and our best (hopefully educated) guess as to whether the outcome warrants continuing.
With three-person IVF, would we be creating a miracle for mothers who don’t want to pass on incurable diseases? Or would we be ‘playing god’ and creating a legal maelstrom as well? Would we have donor mothers suing for rights to baby they claim as theirs? (Remember the Baby M case?) And what kind of medical issues could we see related to the procedure that scientists can’t now predict?
Science sometimes appears to move light-years ahead of the ethics involved in these issues. So will we see a three-person IVF? Science develops the procedures, but the responsibility for deciding whether or not to proceed lies with the rest of us.
About Me
Leanne BennettI'm an American living in England, married to a Brit and the mother of three children. I work for the local council, building and maintaining servers and networks for primary schools.
I think my background, my citizenship, my experiences and my location give me a unique take on life. Herein are my musings on such...
