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Latest Surrogacy News
Ban on
scientists trying to create three-parent baby
By Maxine Frith in San
Antonio, Texas
Independent 14 October 2003
Scientists have created the
first pregnancy that would have produced babies with three
genetic parents.
But after triplets formed
in a woman's womb, one foetus was aborted and two later
miscarried. Now work on the process, called human nuclear
transfer, has been called off after the authorities realised
how close scientists in China were to achieving the birth of
a three-parent child.
Experts at the Sun Yat-Sen
university of medical science in Guangzhou treated a
34-year-old woman who had undergone two IVF cycles, which
had failed because of problems with her eggs.
A donor egg was taken and
all genetic material removed before the nucleus of the
woman's egg was put into the empty one. The researchers
succeeded in transferring five of the three-parent embryos
into the woman and she became pregnant with triplets. A
month into the pregnancy, doctors aborted one foetus to give
the remaining two a better chance. But at four and then five
months the remaining two were delivered prematurely because
of problems and died.
The researchers claim the
deaths were related not to the nuclear transfer process but
to poor care of the woman during her pregnancy.
The practice had already
been outlawed in Britain, amid fears that it could lead to
human cloning, in America and in most other countries. China
has also implemented a ban, just before its scientists were
due to give details of the pregnancy at the annual
conference of the American Society for Reproductive
Medicine, being held this week in Texas.
Scientists working in the
field of reproduction say human nuclear transfer could be a
breakthrough in treating women with poor-quality eggs, which
often result in miscarriages and failed pregnancies. The
process involves taking the nucleus - which contains all
genetic material - out of an unhealthy egg and inserting it
into the egg structure of a donor from which all genetic
material has been wiped.
The resulting embryo
contains all the genetic make-up of the infertile woman but
also mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg. Mitochondrial DNA
is in effect the powerhouse of all cells and is common to
everyone, but it contains tiny and subtle differences in
each individual. Therefore, human nuclear transfer creates
an embryo with the genetic make-up of two mothers and a
father.
Opponents say scientists
are "playing God'' and any child born through the process
could suffer severe psychological and physical damage.
American scientists were
researching nuclear transfer and had developed the process
in mice when in 1998 the US government banned all such
studies amid ethical concerns. They then donated their work
to researchers in China. In their paper, to be presented to
the conference tomorrow, the Chinese conclude: "Viable human
pregnancies ... can be achieved through nuclear transfer."
Dr James Grifo, a New York
university researcher involved in the original work,
criticised the ban. He said: "We would never have made the
advances in treating infertility that we have if these bans
had been imposed 10 years ago.''
But Alison Cook, of the
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which
regulates fertility treatment and research in Britain, said:
"You are mixing three people's DNA. The law was written to
protect the welfare of the embryo and the child."
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