FDA pondering 3-parent babies

Posted on: 8:44 pm, February 26, 2014, by CNN Wire, updated on: 08:45pm, February 26, 2014

(CNN) A promising way to stop a deadly disease, or an uncomfortable step toward what one leading ethicist called eugenics?

U.S. health officials are weighing whether to approve trials of a pioneering in vitro fertilization technique using DNA from three people in an attempt to prevent illnesses like muscular dystrophy and respiratory problems. The proposed treatment would allow a woman to have a baby without passing on diseases of the mitochondria, the powerhouses that drive cells.

The procedure is not without its risks, but its treating a disease, medical ethicist Art Caplan told CNNs New Day on Wednesday. Preventing a disease that can be passed down for generations would be ethical as long as it proves to be safe, he said.

These little embryos, these are people born with a disease, they cant make power. Youre giving them a new battery. Thats a therapy. I think thats a humane ethical thing to do, said Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center.

Where we get into the sticky part is, what if you get past transplanting batteries and start to say, While were at it, why dont we make you taller, stronger, faster or smarter?

But Susan Solomon, the director of the New York Stem Cell Foundation, said there are no changes to existing genes involved.

There is no genetic engineering. It isnt a slippery slope. Its a way to allow these families to have healthy children, said Solomon, whose organization developed the technique along with Columbia University researchers.

What were doing is, without at all changing the DNA of the mother, just allowing it to grow in an environment that isnt sick, she added.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel concluded two days of hearings into the procedure Wednesday. The panel discussed what controls might be used in trials, how a developing embryo might be monitored during those tests and who should oversee the trials, but no decisions were made at the end of the session.

Read more from the original source:
FDA pondering 3-parent babies