---
title: "Britain votes on allowing world’s first three-parent IVF babies"
description: "The treatment is known as \"three-parent\" in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the babies -- born from genetically modified embryos -- would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor."
date: "2015-02-03"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "Matthew Lincoln"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/justmatt"
url: "https://futurism.com/britain-votes-on-allowing-worlds-first-three-parent-ivf-babies"
categories:
  - "Health & Medicine"
  - "Medical"
tags:
  - "medical"
---

# Britain votes on allowing world’s first three-parent IVF babies

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/babies.jpeg>)

- Britain voted on Tuesday to become the first country to allow a "three-parent" IVF technique which doctors say will prevent some inherited incurable diseases but which critics see as a step towards creating designer babies.
- It is designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases, incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide.
- The process involves intervening in the fertilisation process to remove mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, and which, if faulty, can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy.