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from the Kwisatz-Haderach-breeding-program dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
The US Food and Drug Administration is holding hearings to help determine if they should allow oocyte modification of mitochondrial DNA, which could prevent hereditary diseases that cause issues, such as such as seizures and blindness, from being passed on by mothers. In layman's terms, this "three-parent IVF" would allow the mitochondrial DNA of an unaffected woman to replace that of the mother while keeping the main DNA, so the child would still look like the mother and father.
From Scientific American: "Once the mtDNA has been swapped out, the egg could be fertilized in the lab by the father's sperm and the embryo would be implanted back into mom where pregnancy would proceed. The resulting child would be the genetic offspring of the intended mother but would carry healthy mitochondrial genes from the donor."
The New York Times has a shorter version of the story, as well as an opinion column urging ethical and moral consideration of this procedure.
Is this an ethical way to prevent future harm, or the start of a slippery slope to designer babies? Is the creation of designer babies immoral?
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Saturday March 01 2014, @04:41PM
Random statistic: in the USA, only 54% of people would ever vote for an atheist for president: http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims -bias-presidential-candidates.aspx [gallup.com]
Religious people obviously prefer to vote for someone who shares their superstitions, but they are also content to vote for someone whose superstitions contradict theirs! The thing that many of them can't abide is someone without those kinds of superstitions.
Anyone who is working towards a positive future for humanity has to take into account all the facts, and the fact that most people associate themselves with a religion is very significant indeed.
` ... [is that it's the best chance we've got]", I had been intending to add "but there are other, more important reasons too". Most of these other reasons have been touched on in other comments.
Having said all that, I should point out that when I said "one good reason to have strong safeguards