UK Close to Legalizing "Designer Babies"

The 'three-person babies' concept recently got a 382-128 among Members of the Parliament who said yes to the amendment of the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology which aims to create 'designer babies' by removing genetic disease in the baby's early cell formation stage, CBCNews reports.

The amendment is now ready to be submitted to the House of Lords increasing its possibility to become a law in the UK.

BBC said, three-person babies is a life-saving method and a hope to some mothers who have defective mitochondria (a microscopic cell part that generates power and energy to the nucleus) in their reproductive cells.

Said to be a modified version of IVF, this process will extract the defective mitochondria of the original mother and replace it with that of another woman donor.

The operation is very helpful in preventing brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure and blindness among babies.

Meanwhile, the amendment is subject to debates notwithstanding ethical and moral questions in changing the natural make-up of a human being.

Dr. Peter Lin, CBC Radio's medical columnist, via CBC News, pointed out that complications may arise before the baby is born. Lin, further, pointed out that some women patients were not able to conceive babies at all and some lost them in a miscarriage.

"There was one patient who said she had eight miscarriages," he said.

The Spectator also pointed out moral arguments pointing out the sanctity of life. It presented a series of arguments from the 80s exposing the moral-ethical side of IVF.

"Choice is good, but not infinite choice. To have infinite choice is no better than to be coerced. The person who thinks he can choose everything is not merely like a spoilt child; he is deluding himself...Seen in this light, in vitro fertilisation, which is clearly at the more acceptable end of the spectrum of the new biotechnology and has brought happiness to some, might have constituted technical progress, but it also represented moral retrogression," a blog entry from 2003 cited by the site.

Meanwhile, US scientist Dr Shoukhrat Mitalipov from Newcastle, who is the founder of the 'three-person babies' method wants to make it available for women with fertility problems, The Independent said.

Mitalipov is said to have asked permission from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the method's trials.

The scientist said that this method will greatly help older women who are still hoping to have a baby.