'Three parent babies' take a step closer to reality

Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2009-11-12 19:30

Article here. I do believe there will come a time when a "child of the world" will be possible, made up of a genetic amalgam of selected people from across the planet, possibly with genes from a few ducks or tomatoes thrown in there for good measure. I can only imagine what the custody battle will look like. (Hey, do tomatoes have parental rights?) Excerpt:

'Researchers used eggs from young donors to repair damaged eggs of older women in order to increase their chances of fertilisation.

They have not yet used the eggs to produce babies, but they have injected them with sperm to produce an early stage embryo in the laboratory.

While the move breathes new life into "old eggs" and could also remove genetic illnesses, it is likely to provoke an ethical storm as critics believe it could lead to hybrid or genetically modified children.

"If we could transfer these constructed new embryos, I believe the success rate would be high," Atsushi Tanaka, the lead author told the New Scientist.

IVF often fails in older women because there are abnormalities in the outside of their eggs, known as cytoplasm, which surrounds the nucleus.'

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I thought they already mixes human DNA with chimpanzee or baboon or something, at least experimentally, to iron out some birth defect. I think I read it in the paper 3 or 4 years ago. So they're already mixing animals with humans.

Probably a beet is more appropriate than a tomato. That way we can have more screaming, beet-faced feminists. (tomatoes are red enough for honorary women, however.)
Perhaps throw in a pea to make them more intelligent.

-ax

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Submitted by axolotl on Fri, 2009-11-13 03:23