UK Government gives green light to three person IVF
(Vatican Radio) Britain may allow a controversial technique to create babies using
DNA from three people.The country's top medical officer says the move would help couples
avoid passing on rare genetic diseases. But opponents say the procedure is unethical.
Josephine
Quintavalle from the UK based group Comment on Reproductive Ethics gave her reaction
saying, “The United Kingdom is on its own with these developments, the rest of the
world is not in favour of what they’re doing…”
She adds, what I can’t accept
at all is that it is being sold as a cure for mitochondrial disease, it’s not curing
the disease”.
About one in 200 children is born every year in Britain with
a mitochondrial disorder.
British law forbids altering a human egg or an embryo
before transferring it into a woman, so such treatments are currently only allowed
for research.
The government says it plans to publish draft guidelines later
this year before introducing a final version to be debated in the U.K. Parliament
next year.
Politicians would need to approve the use of the new techniques
before patients could be treated. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Josephine
Quintavalle