Controversial IVF treatment effectively creates two mothers


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Infertility guru Lord Winston of the Hammersmith hospital has severely criticised a new technique designed to boost the success rate of IVF, calling it ’disturbing’ on the basis that long term implications are unknown.

Outlawed in Britain the process involves putting mitochondria - the so-called ‘power packs’ present in each individual cell - from young women into the eggs of the older women who are trying to conceive. Because mitochondria carries its own genetic blueprint, the technique results in blending the DNA of the two women involved, allowing the new genetic mixture to be passed down the maternal line to future generations. Effectively this is creating two biological mothers.

Referred to as ’germline gene therapy’ the advent of this process has raised a number of moral and ethical concerns.

Only 30 children in the world have so far been born as a result of the controversial new process which has been banned in Britain by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

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