A British experts scientific panel gave its backing yesterday to potential new 3-way fertility treatments that would for the first time allow ‘genetically modified’ embryos to be implanted into women aspiring pregnancy.
The “three-parent” IVF (In vitro fertilisation) techniques are designed to help families with particular genetic faults who want to avoid passing on incurable diseases to their children.
Known as mitochondrial replacement or transfer, the methods are at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the US and have never yet been carried out in people anywhere in the world.
They are illegal in Britain at this point in time. However, the government said last year it was drawing up draft legislation which if passed into law would allow the treatments to go ahead if they proved safe.
Mitochondrial replacement involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.
The treatment is also known as three-parent in vitro fertilization (IVF), because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father as well as a female donor.
