UK may OK creating babies with DNA from 3 people

Associated Press ^ | Jun 27, 2013 8:05 PM EDT | Maria Cheng

[Olog-hai]

Britain may allow a controversial technique to create babies using DNA from three people, a move that would help couples avoid passing on rare genetic diseases, the country’s top medical officer says.

The new techniques help women with faulty mitochondria, the energy source in a cell, from passing on to their babies defects that can result in such diseases as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and mental retardation. About one in 200 children is born every year in Britain with a mitochondrial disorder. …

Similar research is going on in the U.S., where the embryos are not being used to produce children. …

[Mrs. Don-o]

Yef, I think you're missing the point that the whole trail of R&D leading up to this cellular retrofitting involves manipulation of non-consenting human experimental subjects -- human beings at the embryonic stage --- who are sliced, fused, and variously engineered and then discarded. This is going on, as the article reminds us, both in the US and the UK (elsewhere, too.)

Experimental trials on human subjects are ethical only if the subject consents, or if it is necessary for the benefit of the subject and there is no alternative. IN this case, the subject is being brought into being in an experimental fashion. If it looks like it's turning out not quite like the cookbook said, have you any doubt in the world that they would terminate the baby? If they didn't, they'd doubtless be liable either for "Wrongful Life" or "Wrongful Birth."

What a barbarous age we live in. Savages with labs.

[dfwgator]

[USS Johnston]

God: “Ok everybody, out of the pool.”

HA! (God continues: "Except the asses and swine. It's too late -- my bad.")

[Olog-hai]

So Eccentrica Gallumbits is real after all.