Britain is planning to become the first country in the world to offer controversial "three-parent" fertility treatments to families who want to avoid passing on cureless diseases to their children. The methods, today only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time include implanting genetically modified embryos into women. It involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy. The methods are designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases - incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. Mitochondria act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells. The potential treatment is known as three-parent in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor. Britain's fertility regulator says it has found broad public support for innovative in vitro fertilization techniques. It also found there was no evidence to suggest the techniques were unsafe, but said further research was still necessary. Critics, however, slammed the decision as a breach of ethics, saying there were already safe methods like egg donation to allow people to have children without mitochondria defects. Voice of Russia, Reuters, USA Today. Source: Article, Image: flickr.com
