Today’s papers are reporting that two-mother embryos may help to end hereditary diseases. Nice headline but not quite true. Before you jump to conclusions and set your hair on fire, be aware that women are not about to start self-reproducing and vote men off the island. This two-mother gig still starts with a sperm-fertilized egg. So really, the embryos are mother-father-then-add-another-mother fertilized. Read on, from the National Post:
The scientists take a fertilized egg from a mother with malfunctioning mitochondria, and extract the healthy part of its DNA that contains all the information on how her child will develop. Then, they take a fertilized egg from a donor mother which is stripped of almost all of its DNA, leaving just the shell containing its healthy mitochondria “battery.”
And it should probably be added that the touted elimination of hereditary diseases is for that particular egg only. Granted, if enough babies are fertilized in petrie dishes without hereditary diseases, the diseases will eventually be uprooted. But my uneducated feeling — watching music videos and listening to pop radio and occasionally browsing entertainment news and teen pregnancies stats — tells me that there is still plenty of sex happening the good ole’ fashioned way.
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Actually, you should note that they’re not talking about eggs. They’re talking about two “fertilized eggs”. Yes, they destroy two embryos, two human beings, to make a third.
There’s a good post about it here: http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/blog/index.php?/archives/957-3-parent-human-embryos-created-in-the-UK.html
Darlene: you are quite right. I was going to make the same point, but you beat me to it. It is worth pointing out that they also eventually destroy the third human being in these experiments. And they repeat the experiment many times. This is nothing less than a human rights atrocity of epic proportions.
There is no such thing as a “fertilized egg”. At fertilization, the egg and sperm cease to exist and an new entity called a zygote comes into being. The zygote is the first stage of development of an individual human being. You can find this described in detail in any modern textbook on human embryology. See also:
http://gerardnadal.com/2010/03/23/pro-life-academy-embryo-chapter-2/
Darlene: I’ve seen a lot of pro-lifers argue that conception should be regarded as the begining of life because that is when a new genetic identity is established. If you accept this argument, then this procedure would destroy only *one* embryo, not too, as the genetic identity of one survives intact. And encased in a cell containing good mitrocondria too. Think of it as just a very, very early transplant: The faulty organs get replaced, but the individual remains the same.
You could regard that as an improvement, I suppose.
I think that in princible, even this much could be avoided by substituting an unfertilised egg as a mitrocondria donor. I’m not sure why this wasn’t the procedure used, but I’m sure the researchers know the field better than me and have their reasons. If they can make it work using an unfertilised egg, then they should be able to get the death count even by pro-life standards down to zero. Ignoring failed procedures, of course.
“It is worth pointing out that they also eventually destroy the third human being in these experiments.”
Of course. It’s at the research stage. You can’t expect them to implant an embryo made with experimental, untested and potentially dangerous technology into a woman. It’s going to take a great deal of work in vitro and animal models to establish if this is safe, and to improve the reliability.
“I’ve seen a lot of pro-lifers argue that conception should be regarded as the begining of life because that is when a new genetic identity is established.”
That’s only a strawman. You would do well to understand the full pro-life argument if you want to have any credibility here.