John Carroll speaks to The Washington Post about 'three parent babies'
Thanks to a new in vitro fertilization process, a baby has been born with genetic information from three adults - the baby boy has donated mitochondrial DNA - and is healthy at 5-months-old, according to a New Scientist report.
The experimental process involved parties from across the world. A U.S. fertility doctor, New York-based physician John Zhang, assisted a mother and father from Jordan during a procedure that took place in Mexico. Ethicists from Britain, the only country where a closely related mitochondrial-transfer procedure is legal, supervised the technique.
Professor John Carroll said: “In this case, the techniques are within the capacity of highly skilled experts, and mitochondrial genetic disease can be devastating.”
“When combined with rules that make it illegal to carry out these manipulations there is a perfect storm for drastic action, such as setting up the technique in a country where the rules don’t exist.”