On February 3, 2015, the House of Commons will be given the opportunity to approve a remarkable scientific technique: mitochondrial replacement. In a free vote, MPs will be asked to amend the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 to allow an expert panel to consider requests from couples who want to use the procedure. Such families are blighted by mitochondrial disease, an inherited illness that is passed through the maternal line and which can lead to serious illness and death in children and young adults. These individuals suffer because their mitochondria, which acts as the power packs of their cells, have mutated in a way that leaves their bodies unable to generate enough energy.
Mitochondrial replacement offers the prospect of eradicating the disease by taking a human egg with healthy mitochondria from a donor female. Its main nuclear genes are then replaced with those of a woman affected by mitochondrial disease but whose basic nuclear DNA is healthy. The egg is then fertilised using her partner’s sperm. In this way an embryo is created that has the central genes of the two parents but no longer carries the mutated mitochondrial DNA once carried by the mother. Thus future generations of these families will be spared the curse of mitochondrial illness. It is a bit like changing a faulty car battery, as the government’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, has put it.
But the technique is controversial. At least 60 MPs have indicated their opposition to mitochondrial replacement while the Church of England claimed last week that there had been insufficient consultation over the issue and accused parliament of rushing the Commons debate. The Catholic church has also voiced its doubts and has called for further trials and tests to be carried out to ensure the technique’s safety. Such doubts appear to be at odds with the facts, however, as was made clear by Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, a major funder of UK medical research.
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Read full, original article: The Observer view on mitochondrial replacement
