contraception. The progress has been optimistic; however, moving from the research stage into clinical practice and the acceptance from the public implicates some degree of uncertainty. A frequently heard objection to three-parent IVF is that this technique would result in babies carrying DNA from three different people on the first occasion in a large scale. Not only is this technique highly dangerous and unnecessary, but also sets an exemplar for allowing the creation of genetically modified designer babies 16 . This is extremely risky since this technique has not been tried on human beings before. Bringing in a third person’s DNA, scientists are at risk of introducing a new element to the population, which will stay in the population at large for generations down the line forever 17 . Dr. David King, the director of Human Genetics Alert, maintained that three-parent IVF has the potential to cross ‘what is normally considered the most important ethical line in the prevention of a new eugenics’ and create a slippery slope, which people can genetically design their own ‘babies’ 18 . Once the ethical line has been crossed, it is very unlikely to reverse the situation. In addition, further complications on three-parent IVF sparked such as when the children should be told and what is the legal status of women who donate the mitochondrial DNA 19 . However, before proceeding to the discussion on whether three-parent IVF should be legalized, it is of importance to look at transplantation and IVF first 20 . Organs are transplanted to patients with failing organs to prolong their lifespan; fertilized egg is transferred to the uterus to enable unconventional couples to have children. IVF itself, once sparkled massive debate on the legality issues, was legalized in UK for all couples in 2009 and changed massively the initial notion of reproduction. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), together with IVF, is allowed and also available for couples to screen against genetic abnormalities as well as to select the sex of the children to prevent passing on severe sex-linked disease 21 . If we move from PGD with IVF to three-parent IVF, the same analogy applies, except that in three-parent IVF, it screens out dysfunctional mitochondria DNA and prevents them from passing on. Both practices are similar in the sense that they provide the opportunity to screen against the faulty genes from the parents, so that the children are not destined to inherit them. The legalization of three-parent IVF has its own merits as well. Although it captures the impression from the public that the resulting baby will contain DNA from three people, the fact is that mitochondrial DNA is a minute quantity of DNA: the resulting embryo contains all the genes from the nucleus of the parents (more than 20,000) plus a few dozen genes from the donated mitochondrial DNA, which takes up of 0.1% of the whole genome 22 . The nuclear DNA from the two parents solely determines the physical properties and traits. In addition, the legal mother of a child is the woman who carries and gives birth to the child. It is argued that the principle remains true even where the child is the result of egg or embryo donation. Furthermore, looking at this issue in a utilitarian manner, the act of manipulating the dysfunctional mitochondria reduces the suffering of the parents and the potential baby with mitochondrial disorder significantly 23 . It will enable families who possess the faulty mitochondria to have healthy children which are genetically their own. A piece of recent news explored the history of cytoplasmic transfer, which is a technique developed in the late 1990s by a clinical embryologist Dr. Jacques Cohen and him team in the US 24 . Due to ethical and safety concerns, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked private infertility clinics to stop the procedure in 2002. Cytoplasmic transfer is slightly different compared to the three-parent IVF treatment. In cytoplasmic transfer, the cytoplasm and the mitochondria are injected into mother’s egg from the donor’s egg. Thus, the mother’s egg (having the mother’s and the donor’s mitochondria mixed together) is fertilized with sperm from the father 25 . In fact, 17 babies were born using the technique at that time; two of the babies had Turner syndrome, meaning having one missing X chromosome. Another one was found to have pervasive early developmental disorder; however, since the study group is extremely small, there is a higher uncertainty that those abnormalities occurred by chance or due to the procedure 26 . Besides, there had been no follow-up of the 17 children to find out whether they had developed any long-term health problems as a result. Recently, the news focused on Alana
16 Margalit and Hirano and D. Loike, 2013 17 New Scientist, Don't fear babies made with genes from three parents, 2013 18 Gallagher, 2012a 19 Gallagher, 2012b 20 Walsh, 2012 21 Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), 2014 22 Mitochondrial donation consultation launched, Government, 2014 23 Wilcockson, 2008
24 Connor, 2014b 25 Connor, 2014a 26 Pritchard, 2014
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