While one international team of doctors spurred outrage recently over promises to clone a human being, another team has quietly helped several families around the world give birth to babies who are the first to carry the genes of two mothers and one father. Their experiments introduced material from the eggs of younger donors to help older women become pregnant.
Controversy surrounds the birth of babies who carry the genes of two mothers and one father.
This is an ethically momentous shift. The infertility treatments were carried on by highly respected doctors at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine at St. Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey in an effort to raise the success rate of IVF treatment for older women. Thirty babies worldwide have been born as a result, and tests on two babies that are now about one year old confirm that they carry a small amount of genetic material from the donor. At this point there is no reason to risk children and future generations for a therapy with no proven need. People should be disturbed that there has been human germ-line modification without any scientific review.