UK may become the first country in the world to allow a controversial IVF technique that creates babies using DNA from three people, to stop parents from passing genetic diseases to their offspring.
A landmark decision by UK’s Department of Health has opened the door to controversial treatments for inherited diseases that use donated DNA from a second donor mother, despite fears it might lead to "designer babies".The department announced that the UK Government intends to publish draft regulations later this year in a public consultation about the in vitro fertilisation IVF-based techniques to eradicate Mitochondrial Diseases.
The new regulations to fertility law allowing the procedures will be issued for consultation and then debated in Parliament, the Sky News reported.In case the MPs find the regulations ethically acceptable, the first patients could be treated within months. It is envisaged that between five and 10 three-parent |babies would be born in Britain each year.
The aim of the IVF treatments is to stamp out serious Mitochondrial Diseases which can be passed from a mother to her children. Mitochondria replacement involves transferring nuclear genetic material from a mother’s egg or embryo into a donor egg or embryo that has had its nuclear DNA removed so the embryo does not inherit the mitochondrial disease.