The Issue - Were MPs right to approve 'three-person' babies?

YES

Ed Vaizey, member of parliament for Didcot and Wantage

As many readers will know, the House of Commons voted last Wednesday to approve a new scientific technique that will help prevent mothers from passing on serious mitochondrial diseases to their children.

This issue is one which has divided both the general public and MPs, and the vote took place after an impassioned and very well-informed debate in which all of the issues were thoroughly examined.

Whilst I am extremely aware of the concerns that a number of constituents have raised with me in emails and letters, I think it is very important to note that thorough, scientific reviews have found no evidence that these techniques are at all unsafe. The scientific community has been clear in its support for the introduction of these regulations.

Why do we need this? Well, estimates show that 1 in 6,500 children born in the UK each year suffer from a serious mitochondrial DNA disorder.

Parliament’s intention in approving these regulations is to ensure that mothers who carry damaged mitochondria can have children with the confidence that they will be born without the devastating and often deadly conditions that can be caused by serious mitochondrial disease.

This procedure will also ensure that those children born to mothers with flawed mitochondria will also not pass these onto their own children. The approval of these regulations will be life-changing for those families who are affected by mitochondrial disease.

I should point out that before licences could be issued to providers of mitochondrial donation, they would be required to demonstrate that they could carry out the procedure safely and effectively. Each provider would need to be licensed, and treatment for each patient would be approved on a case-by-case basis.

In summary, I do realise that many people have objected to these regulations for moral or religious reasons. Whilst many have referred to this technique as allowing for the creation of 'three-person babies', I think it is important to remember that mitochondrial DNA represents 0.054 per cent of the total DNA of a child, and has absolutely no impact on the personal characteristics, eye colour, hair colour or personality of a child.

NO

Prof David Albert Jones, Director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, which is based in Oxford

Members of Parliament have just approved regulations on mitochondrial donation. What these regulations in fact permit are the removal and insertion of ‘nuclear DNA’ out of and into human eggs or embryos.

When the law was changed in 2008 the Government assured us that regulations allowing genetically-modified children would only be enacted “once it was clear that the scientific procedures involved were effective and safe”.

This is still not clear, and the vote to pass these regulations was premature.

There is a real danger that a form of genetic modification will be tried in humans before it has even been tested in non-human primates.

Using these techniques will also increase the use of donor eggs in both research and assisted reproduction.

In this and other countries there are already ethical concerns in relation to the supply of human eggs. Women are now being paid for their eggs, or receiving their fertility treatment free. Financial incentives are a particular concern in relation to egg donors from poorer countries.

So far in this debate there has been a noticeable lack of discussion of the implications of developing yet more technologies which rely on using women’s bodies.

While it is clear that we need more research to find ethical means of treating mitochondrial disorders (and other inherited conditions), these proposals are not for treatment of any affected individual. The techniques begin with a donor egg or embryo that is healthy, and then replace the nuclear material so that the child produced will be genetically related to the woman providing nuclear DNA.

This all-but-erases the egg-donor-mother from the picture without adding to the safety of standard egg or embryo donation. The regulations also amend the Act so that an egg donor and the child conceived using her egg have fewer rights to know about one another. Such a child may well have three biological parents but one of these parents would not be acknowledged.

Finally, in the technique that is currently being developed in Newcastle, two embryos would be destroyed in the process of constructing each modified embryo. This is a further step in commodification of the human embryo and one to which I am strongly opposed.

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