Last week a committee of scientists and ethicists have recommended to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they approve three-parent embryo techniques for use in IVF in the United States. The committee calls it mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRT) because the goal is too “replace” defective mitochondria in woman with mitochondrial disease so they do […]
Sometimes reports impacting respect for the dignity of the human person appear to have been written by Rod Serling, creator of the 1950’s television series The Twilight Zone. For example, in China it is reported that scientists are editing the genomes of human embryos. The research has been roundly criticized by Marcy Darnovsky of the […]
I will be honest. I am tired. I am angry. I am frustrated. This is likely an uncharacteristically emotional post because, after nearly a decade of writing about biotechnology, I am uncharacteristically horrified. The UK has officially approved the creation of embryos with three genetic parents, and babies created with this technique are likely to […]
At a time when more and more people are becoming wary of generically-modified foods in their diet, the United Kingdom is poised to begin creating genetically-modified children with the genetic material of three people, two women and one man; a genetic combination that could not occur naturally.And the way the UK goes, the United States […]
Many people are not aware that there are already about two dozen kids in the United States that have been genetically modified. A recent headline exclaims that “The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will Graduate High School This Year.” This is true.Nearly 2 decades ago, Dr. Jacques Cohen of the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and […]
Last month the UK’s Department of Health quietly redefined the term “genetic modification” to open the door to allow certain kinds of modification of human embryos – thus potentially making it the first country in the world to allow genetic engineering. Scottish journalist Lori Anderson recently raised the alarm over the change in a column […]
Both the 1932 novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the 1997 science fiction movie “Gattaca” are classified as dystopias because they depict societies riddled with misery, tragedy, and a dehumanizing culture. Both attribute this decline in civilization to manipulations of human genetics and perversions of human reproduction. In Brave New World the traditional […]
This week the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to discuss allowing the creation of human beings with three genetic parents to proceed to clinical trials. That is, whether to allow human “three-parent embryos” to be implanted and possibly grow to term. There are currently two different techniques for manufacturing three-parent embryos, the purpose of […]
The UK rubber stamp Embryo Authority has approved the manufacture of three-parent human embryos. The process is done by removing the nucleus from the egg of one woman, putting it into the enucleated egg of another, and then fertilizing with sperm. Voila, three biological parents. The approach is supposed to enable women with mitochondrial disease—who […]
