From Mahdi Lamb
I was glad to read your article on the debate about legislation regarding so-called three-parent babies (14 June, p 28).
One of the concerns Donna Dickenson and Marcy Darnovsky raised was that it could lead to changes in the law allowing for germ-line modification, DNA changes that are inheritable. I would argue that the techniques, which simply replace harmful mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) with healthy mtDNA, don’t quite fall into this category.
Also, I find the phrase “three-parent baby” a little too sensationalist. The Nuffield Council of Bioethics has said: “as only part of the donated egg is used and not its nuclear DNA, it is not legally or biologically accurate to refer to the mitochondrial donor as a mother or ‘third parent’ of the resulting child.”
In fact, a bone marrow donor is a better comparison to make with a healthy mtDNA egg donor.
Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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