Genetically-modified Babies

We are getting closer to producing babies that can avoid some diseases carried in the genes of their parent. In the next two years, Patrick Chinnery, the British Professor of Neurogenetics at the Newcastle University said, couples will benefit from the results of the research conducted on embryos created with DNA from 3 people, two women and one man. The research group had successfully created 10 such embryos using normal embryos from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman’s egg, and implanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria. It was found that mistakes in the mitochondria’s genetic code could result in serious diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation. The House of Commons will discuss the issue to allow the procedure to be regulated as a therapy for couples in March this year. I think this is very good news for the future parents who wants to swap bad genes for good ones so that they don’t have to pass gene carrying diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation to the next generation.

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