Baby born with controversial three-parent technique

The birth of a baby created using a controversial new ‘three-parent baby’ technique in Mexico, has been announced.


Sketchy information about this first-ever sort of birth were revealed ahead of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine's scientific congress in Salt Lake City in October, where it will be discussed in more detail.

According to critics, the procedure is similar to genetic modification of humans or even “playing God”. But supporters say it allows women with a particular type of genetic disease to have healthy children who are related to them.

A report in the New Scientist magazine said the baby born through that process was now five months told. His parents are Jordanians and the work was carried out by a team of experts from the United States.

The child’s mother has Leigh syndrome, a deadly disorder that affects the developing nervous system and would have been passed on in her mitochondrial DNA.

Although she is healthy, two of her children have died as a result of inheriting the disease: a girl who lived until she was six and another eight-month-old baby.

There are different ways of creating a 'three-parent baby.'

The technique used by Dr John Zhang, of the New Hope Fertility Clinic in New York, and his team involved taking the nucleus from one of the mother's eggs – containing her DNA – and implanting it into a donor egg that had its nucleus removed but retained the donor’s healthy mitochondrial DNA.