<h2>Infertility Overcome</h2>
<p>The new year has already brought some amazing developments in science. For the first time ever, a baby was born to an infertile couple using <a href="http://www.sciencealert.com/world-first-in-ukraine-as-three-parent-baby-born-to-an-infertile-couple">DNA from three people</a>. The healthy baby girl was born on January 5 in the Ukraine.</p>
<p>The procedure, known as mitochondrial donation, has been used before to treat mothers whose mitochondrial DNA is unhealthy, and would have otherwise resulted in children with genetic disorders. However, this is the first time that the procedure was used to treat infertility. The specific process, in this case, is called &#8220;pronuclear transfer.&#8221;</p>
<p>After years of unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilization, a team at the Nadiya clinic in Kiev, Ukraine, led by Valery Zukin were able to fertilize the mother&#8217;s egg using the father&#8217;s sperm and then transfer the result (called a pronucleus) into an egg from a donor female. This was implanted in the mother&#8217;s womb, and after a healthy pregnancy, a baby containing the genetics of three &#8220;parents&#8221; was born. Zukin has stated that the baby is healthy and, after testing, does indeed carry DNA from all three adults involved.</p>
<figure style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/01/dr-zukin-with-three-parent-baby-born-in-kiev--1200x800.jpg" alt="Photo credit: Nadiya Clinic" width="778" height="380" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Photo credit: Nadiya Clinic</figcaption></figure>
<h2>A New Era in Reproduction</h2>
<p>Mitochondrial donation has been approved in the UK since 2015, but only for use in a very limited range of circumstances in which the mother&#8217;s mitochondrial DNA has abnormalities that would cause any offspring to be born with congenital disorders. There was also a case in Mexico where the procedure was used to bypass a child from getting her mother&#8217;s genetic nervous disorder, Leigh disease.</p>
<p>In this respect, Ukraine is more like Mexico with a lack of regulation on the practice. &#8220;In Ukraine, the situation is very simple – it&#8217;s not forbidden,&#8221; <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/health/ivf-three-parent-baby-girl-ukraine-bn/index.html">said Zukin</a>. &#8220;We have not any regulation concerning this.&#8221;</p>
<p>One of the major concerns with this new kind of treatment is that any genetic modifications produced in babies conceived with this method would be passed on to their children. Zukin&#8217;s team has monitored the genetic health of the baby throughout the pregnancy and will continue to do so for at least the next five years of the child&#8217;s life.</p>
<p>A mish-mash of differing laws, regulations, and a lack thereof can often lead to medical tourism, which is where individuals travel to countries where their desired treatment is available. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/18/health/ivf-three-parent-baby-girl-ukraine-bn/index.html">Lori P. Knowles</a>, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Alberta School of Public Health, emphasizes the importance of global consensus in emerging medical procedure. However, an argument can be made against such consensus when it comes down to red tape being the only thing slowing down progress.</p>
<p>Zukin and his team, along with John Zhang&#8217;s team responsible for the &#8220;3-parent-baby&#8221; in Mexico are dealing with real people looking for proverbial miracles. It looks like they have indeed found them.</p>


Health & Medicine

After years of unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilization, a healthy baby girl was born to an infertile Ukrainian couple using DNA from three people.
The procedure has been used before to treat mothers whose mitochondrial DNA is unhealthy, and would have otherwise resulted in children with genetic disorders.

A Baby With Three Parents Was Just Born

Could three parents or more become a standard?

<h2>One Baby, Three Parents</h2>
<p>The United Kingdom’s fertility regulator will now begin accepting applications from clinics seeking to offer patients mitochondrial donation. The treatment has been proven to help women with mitochondrial DNA mutations give birth to healthy babies, and <a href="http://www.hfea.gov.uk/" target="_blank">the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority&#8217;s (HFEA)</a> approval for the technique has been deemed a historic step forward in this field.</p>
<p>The process involves the removal of the nucleus DNA from the egg of the mother carrying the mitochondrial disease and transferring it to a donor egg. The egg is fertilized with the father&#8217;s sperm, and the embryo is then implanted in the mother. That embryo will therefore have nucleus DNA from its parents, but mictochondrial DNA from a donor, though the third-party DNA will account for less than one percent of the embryo’s genes.</p>
<p>“Today’s historic decision means that parents at very high risk of having a child with a life-threatening mitochondrial disease may soon have the chance of a healthy, genetically related child. This is life-changing for those families,” <a href="http://www.hfea.gov.uk/10563.html?platform=hootsuite">says HFEA Chair Sally Cheshire</a> in a statement.</p>
<p>A mitochondrial donation at a Mexican clinic resulted in the successful <a href="https://futurism.com/baby-with-dna-from-three-people-born-using-first-of-its-kind-fertilization-method/" target="_blank">birth of a three-parent baby</a> earlier this year, and the team behind that case recently <a href="https://futurism.com/a-new-age-in-pregnancy-20-more-three-parent-babies-are-coming-in-2017/" target="_blank">announced plans</a> to treat as many as 20 new patients in the first half of 2017.</p>
<figure style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/12/800px-Ragged_red_fibres_-_gtc_-_very_high_mag.jpg" width="800" height="381" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Micrograph showing ragged red fibers, a finding seen in various types of mitochondrial diseases. Image Credit: Nephron/Wikimedia</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Life-Changing Treatment</h2>
<p>Women with mitochondrial disorders have a high risk of passing on the mutated DNA to their offspring. In most cases, the affected child will die early due to the lack of available treatment options or suffer debilitating condition such as muscular dystrophy, organ failure, and muscle weakness.</p>
<p>Prior to the availability of mitochondrial donation, women with faulty mitochondria who wanted to have children were limited to adoption or undergoing <a href="https://futurism.com/?s=in+vitro+fertilization" target="_blank">in vitro fertilization (IVF)</a> using healthy donor eggs. If they wanted to push for genetically related offspring, they would have to risk natural birth or undergo a screening procedure that could potentially help doctors find embryos with the fewest mutations.</p>
<p>Despite being a viable and better alternative to existing options, the procedure is not universally embraced. Critics have asserted that the DNA manipulation the technique requires could eventually lead to the creation of “designer babies.” However, as it provides a solution to a condition for which there is currently no better option, the value of this breakthrough is enormous.</p>
<p>Receiving the green light from regulatory bodies proves that advancements that could save lives and have positive life-changing implications right now will garner support despite any hypothetical future scenarios. “After a lot of hard work and invaluable advice from the expert panel, who reviewed the development, safety, and efficacy of these techniques over five years and four reports, we feel now is the right time to carefully introduce this new treatment in the limited circumstances recommended by the panel,” says Cheshire.</p>


Clinics in the UK can now offer patients mitochondrial donation, a treatment that uses DNA from a third person to help women with mitochondrial diseases give birth to healthy babies.
Despite criticism that mitochondrial donation will one day lead to "designer babies," the only certainty is that it can help patients right now overcome a problem with no other solution.

U.K. Approves Fertilization Treatment Using DNA From Multiple People to Make Babies

Approval will help families give birth to healthy, genetically related children.

<h2><b></b>Three DNAs and a Baby</h2>
<p>Though he&#8217;s not the first to be born with DNA from three people, a special little five-month-old baby is the first to have been conceived and birthed using a new and controversial technique called mitochondrial donation, an improvement of leaps and bounds over those techniques used by doctors as far back as the 1990s to create babies with DNA from three people.</p>
<p>Found in almost every cell, mitochondria, nicknamed the &#8220;powerhouses of the cell,&#8221; are small compartments that convert food into energy. Though mitochondria are separate from most of our DNA, which is located inside the nucleus of cells, mitochondrial genetic defects are always passed along to offspring. With mitochondrial donation, doctors use a donation from a third party to repair the mitochondria in the mother&#8217;s egg before it is fertilized in the lab with the father&#8217;s sperm.</p>
<p>U.S. doctors decided the procedure was the best way to save this baby from inheriting <a href="http://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/leigh-syndrome/" target="_blank">Leigh Syndrome</a>, a genetic defect carried by his Jordanian mother. The disorder results in the degeneration of the central nervous system and would have been fatal for the child.  A healthy donor egg was used to provide the mitochondria for the successful operation, resulting in a baby with <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37485263" target="_blank">0.1 percent of his DNA</a> coming from the donor and the rest from his mother and father.</p>
<figure style="width: 624px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/09/62905219_pnt_slide2_624x398.gif" alt="Credits: HFEA" width="624" height="380" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Mitochondrial donation. Credits: <i>HFEA</i></figcaption></figure>
<h2>Worth the risks?</h2>
<p>Mitochondrial donation can save lives, but the procedure is highly controversial. Those who oppose it cite concerns about how children born with DNA from three people will feel about their origins, what happens to the unused embryos, and the potential long-term effects of genetic modification when stating their cases for why such procedures should be outlawed.</p>
<p>In fact, they are outlawed in many countries, including the U.S. The team that performed the operation had to fly to Mexico where there are no laws that prohibited the procedure. But amidst all the criticism and controversy, the team still believes that they did the right thing.</p>
<p>“To save lives is the ethical thing to do,&#8221; <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107219-exclusive-worlds-first-baby-born-with-new-3-parent-technique/?utm_source=NSNS&amp;utm_medium=ILC&amp;utm_campaign=webpush&amp;cmpid=ILC%257CNSNS%257C2016-GLOBAL-webpush-3PARENT" target="_blank">says Dr. John Zhang</a>, who led the team from NYC&#8217;s New Hope Fertility Center. In October, they will present their finding at a meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, so people on both sides of the debate will have a chance to ask questions and learn more about this controversial procedure that could change lives across the globe.</p>
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/09/image001_fuzzed.jpg" width="600" height="380" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Credits: New Scientist, John Zhang</figcaption></figure>


Enhanced Humans

A successful mitochondrial donation procedure has resulted in a healthy baby born with DNA from three people.
At least one in 40,000 newborns are born with the severe neurological disorder carried by the boy's mother.

/Mitochondrial Donation

Health & Medicine

A Baby With Three Parents Was Just Born

Health & Medicine

U.K. Approves Fertilization Treatment Using DNA From Multiple People to Make Babies

Enhanced Humans

Baby With DNA From Three People Born Using First-Of-Its-Kind Fertilization Method

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