The Pros And Cons Of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy

In ‘Ethical Considerations of “Three-Parent” Babies’, J.D. Loike and N. Reame of Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons discuss mitochondrial replacement therapy. Mitochondrial replacement therapy, or three-parent IVF, is where a nucleus from an egg in a woman with a mitochondrial disease is injected into an egg from a healthy woman that’s nucleus has been removed. This combination egg is then placed into a healthy uterus via in vitro fertilization.
Ethical concerns arise with this, particularly in regards to how it should be regulated. Some feel it should be regulated like traditional organ donation, where it is given anonymously and neither party has any further responsibility to the other. Others feel that it is more complicated, and should be treated like egg donation, with the special policies that come with that. Ethical concerns also come with people who worry that something like this is akin to ‘playing God’ with our DNA. However, scientists note that this process is
Rood sums up current research being done around an alternative to mitochondrial replacement therapy. In any given human cell, there are 1,000 to 100,000 mitochondria floating around. These mitochondria have their own DNA, DNA which can vary from mitochondria to mitochondria, even in the same cell. There are two main types of mitochondrial genomes, wild type, which are natural, and mutated, which contains harmful mutations that can cause disease in the human they are present in. Scientists have figured out how to inject an enzyme into the mitochondria of an individual with a combination of diseased and healthy mitochondria that will kill off the mutated ones. Then, because cells like keeping the number of mitochondria consistent, the wild type mitochondria will reproduce until all of the mutated ones have been replaced. Tests run on mice injected with human DNA show that this will work, and could be a replacement for ‘three-parent