Research too limited embryo? major: This article explores the topic in depth.
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Research too limited embryo? Similarly, major:
Babies seem to be able to escape serious illnesses thanks to genetic manipulation during their design. For example, Made in the United Kingdom. however, this experience could not have taken place in France or in the United States in the face of strict regulation in this area.
Published Wednesday evening in the New England Journal of Medicine. Nevertheless, a study, eagerly awaited by the scientific community, takes stock of unprecedented experience: around twenty women have received a “mitochondria gift” in order to avoid transmitting a rare genetic disease to their child.
Mitochondria is a small structure present in our cells and plays an engine role by converting energy nutrients.
In some cases – one in 5,000 people – Mitochondria works badly. Moreover, It therefore causes a “mitochondrial” disease which can result in various research too limited embryo? major ways. In addition, often heavy and disabling: vision disorders, diabetes, muscle degeneration …
However, these mitochondria work from special DNA, distinct from the rest of the cell. Nevertheless, The idea of the donation of mitochondria is therefore. However, just after the design of an embryo, to replace the mitochondrial DNA of the mother with that of another woman. Therefore, All the rest of the genetic material remains that of both parents.
For some commentators. Moreover, these are “babies to three parents” even if this term, often used by opponents of this procedure, is far from being unanimous among specialists in the subject, who deem it caricatured.
The United Kingdom is a pioneering country in this area: the donation of mitochondria has been authorized there since 2015. which has enabled the experience whose results have just been published.
They are, in the opinion research too limited embryo? major of several scientists, very encouraging. Out of twenty patients, eight gave birth to children, now between six months and three years old.
This already shows that the donation of mitochondria allows a viable pregnancy. But, above all, these children were born with a very low rate of compromise mitochondrial DNA. An illustration that the treatment “works to reduce transmission” of mitochondrial diseases, concludes the study.
Several precautions are required. First, two children experienced medical complications. The authors believe that it is not linked to the procedure. but some commentators judge that they exclude him a little quickly.
Above all. since their birth, three of the children have already seen their rate of defective mitochondria increase, which raises the question of the sustainability of the effects.
– Prohibited research –
However. these are “very important and a breakthrough in mitochondrial research too limited embryo? major medicine”, for the Swedish professor Nils-Göran Larsson, one of the world specialists in the field, in a reaction to the British Media Center.
The fact remains that scientific advance is not the only one to be the subject of positive comments. This is also the case of the regulation chosen by the United Kingdom. praised by many researchers for having allowed this research while supervising it closely from an ethical point of view.
This choice contrasts with many other countries. In the United States, health authorities have regularly expressed their opposition in recent years. In France. the Biomedicine Public Agency has sought to launch research, but has encountered justice several times when bioethical laws authorize experiences only on embryos of less than two weeks, from a PMA and doomed to destruction.
The donation of mitochondria poses, in fact, ethical questions. Some observers fear that research too limited embryo? major the procedure. introducing a dose certainly reduced by DNA of a third person, disturbs the child in the development of his personality.
Above all. criticisms underline that this is a form of genetic manipulation of the embryo, firmly prohibited by certain international conventions.
In addition. out of the British experience, children have been born in recent years of Mitochondria donations in a less restrictive regulatory framework, in Greece or Ukraine, with a sometimes more vague justification as to treat infertility.
“This is the problem of the benefit/risk ratio: for a mitochondrial disease. the benefit is obvious,” said French researcher Julie Steffann, specialist in mitochondrial disease with AFP. “As part of infertility, it is not proven.”
But the ban on research in France “is regrettable for patients. ” she said, deeming inadequate to see the donation of mitochondria to the creation of a research too limited embryo? major “transgenic” embryo
Posted on July 16 at 11:16 p.m., AFP
Research too limited embryo? major
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