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UK to allow babies from three people

bbc.com

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Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#41

Post by tn13 »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #34
manicdee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? No limits to available fresh water supplies? No limits to energy production? Once you run you of fresh water and have to rely on nuclear power to run the desalination plants to keep people watered, you have three major problems.

> Are you suggesting there are no limits to growth? There are limits to growth. We are just not anywhere near them, and don't seem to be approaching them. World birth rates are coming down fast enough that world population will probably never again double. > No limits to available fresh water supplies? Fresh water is a local problem. The world fresh water supply is renewable and renews at a rate several orders of mag…

Honestly, a cheap and infinite source of energy is all we need. Nuclear and Solar engergy is sooner or later going to be both cheap and near infinite. That is likely to solve most problems for humanity.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#42

Post by [deleted] »

BadCookie wrote: post #7

I wonder how people will feel about two men being genetic parents to one baby (with the help of a surrogate mother) once it becomes technologically possible. In that case, no disease is being avoided, but I don't think it falls under the realm of a "designer" baby either. My guess is that many of us will live to see it happen.

[deleted]

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#44

Post by geographomics »

[deleted] wrote: post #42
BadCookie wrote: post #7

I wonder how people will feel about two men being genetic parents to one baby (with the help of a surrogate mother) once it becomes technologically possible. In that case, no disease is being avoided, but I don't think it falls under the realm of a "designer" baby either. My guess is that many of us will live to see it happen.

[deleted]

That's not the problem - if such a technique worked (it's been attempted in mice [1,2]), two males could produce XX or XY offspring, as you get X sperms and Y sperms. The restriction would be on two females, they could only combine to make XX.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6722870

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4123998/

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#45

Post by stenl »

mikerichards wrote: post #21
JacobAldridge wrote: post #2

We (my beautiful wife and I) are currently going through the baby-making limbo, and it looks as though IVF will be the necessary next step. When you start actively trying to have children, there's loads of literature preparing you for the pregnancy swelling and the sleepless life of parenthood etc - less so preparing you for the anxiety, uncertainty, and just general feeling of not being in control of your life which…

We did IVF and got pregnant on our first try. We now have a beautiful 2 year old boy :) Good luck.

We did it four times, and now have four beautiful sons aged 4 - 15 (some requiring a couple of attempts). Not saying IVF will be easy for you, but that it's perfectly fine and - for some people - more efficient way of making babies. We never did find out why making babies the old-fashioned way doesn't work for us.

Very good luck!

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#46

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

Cogito wrote: post #23
gameshot911 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those who think this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans, or so called "designer babies" Well...this is the start of ever more invasive genetic modification of humans.

I guess it is! That said, I don't think the 'slippery slope' arguments made in parliament are valid, precisely because this is a very specific kind of genetic modification: > "But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorise today go ahead, there will be no going back for society." Replacing mi…

The 'slippery slope' argument also seems easy to fix in this case.

Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#47

Post by stenl »

geographomics wrote: post #44
[deleted] wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

That's not the problem - if such a technique worked (it's been attempted in mice [1,2]), two males could produce XX or XY offspring, as you get X sperms and Y sperms. The restriction would be on two females, they could only combine to make XX. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6722870 [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4123998/

Men would get on average 1/3 daughters (XX) and 2/3 sons (XY and YX). The YY offspring would not be viable. Women would only get daughters.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#48

Post by brianpgordon »

> Other groups, including Human Genetics Alert, say the move would open the door to further genetic modification of children in the future - so-called designer babies, genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease.

There are people who don't think this is a good thing?! If we could eliminate congenital disease, and make everyone smarter, it would be like fast-forwarding human evolution.

Re: UK to allow babies from three people

#50

Post by geographomics »

Crito wrote: post #11

Does anybody know why the "embryo repair" method would be used if the "egg repair" method was also an option? Is the embryo-repair method meant to weed out donor eggs that were not viable (by first ensuring that they can at least be fertilized, by fertilizing them)?

This paper from 2011 has a nice comparison of the two methods, there's pros and cons for both: [1]

According to the HFEA [2], the research group in Newcastle (who wrote the above paper) has been testing the two methods against each other - no decision yet as to the best for treatment, though.

[1] http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/R2/R168.full#sec-5

[2] Section 3.4.4 of http://www.hfea.gov.uk/docs/Third_Mitochondrial_replacement_...

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