Pressure to use double mother technique

Thursday April 15th, 2010

Medical researchers welcomed a British breakthrough, announced yesterday, which seeks to eliminate muscular diseases by combining eggs from two women.

The new technique, developed in Newcastle, aims to tackle diseases passed on through mitochondrial DNA - which is responsible for providing energy to a cell.

The breakthrough is likely to prove controversial as it goes beyond the provisions of last year's hotly-contested Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.

A child born through the technique would have DNA from three people - its father, mother and another woman.

However the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, which has funded the research, said it was pressing for the technique to be legalised.

Chief executive Philip Butcher said: "These findings will be a ray of hope for people affected by mitochondrial diseases who can often be left with the heart-breaking decision of whether to have children who may be born with a serious illness.

"In the future this technique may give parents the choice to have a healthy child and end the tragic cycle that some families go through, passing on these conditions from generation to generation.

"I would urge the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to permit fertility treatment using these techniques as soon as the method is proved to be effective and safe in humans."

Senior medical researchers also backed the work, published last night in the journal Nature.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, chief executive of the UK Medical Research Council, said it was "fantastic".

He said: "Research such as this can only flourish where there is a robust regulatory framework and we are delighted to see UK researchers at the cutting edge of this developing field."

Around one in 6,500 children are born with serious mitochondrial diseases.

The researchers used donated eggs to provide healthy mitochondria. The eggs were flawed and could not have been used on their own for test-tube treatment.

The genetic core of the eggs, the pronuclei which carry chromosomes from the parents, was removed and replaced with pronuclei from the would-be parents.

The researchers said they had successfully produced some 80 fertilised eggs - and these had been cultivated up to the legal limit of eight days.

Researcher Professor Doug Turnbull said: "What we've done is like changing the battery on a laptop. The energy supply now works properly, but none of the information on the hard drive has been changed.

"A child born using this method would have correctly functioning mitochondria, but in every other respect would get all their genetic information from their father and mother."

Tags: Childbirth and Pregnancy | Genetics | UK News | Women’s Health & Gynaecology

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