FDA weighs 3-parent baby in vitro technique to prevent disease

Workers in a fertility clinic prepare to freeze an embryo.

(CNN) A promising way to stop a deadly disease, or an uncomfortable step toward what one leading ethicist called eugenics?

U.S. health officials are weighing whether to approve trials of a pioneering in vitro fertilization technique using DNA from three people in an attempt to prevent illnesses like muscular dystrophy and respiratory problems. The proposed treatment would allow a woman to have a baby without passing on diseases of the mitochondria, the powerhouses that drive cells.

The procedure is not without its risks, but its treating a disease, medical ethicist Art Caplan told CNNs New Day on Wednesday. Preventing a disease that can be passed down for generations would be ethical as long as it proves to be safe, he said.

These little embryos, these are people born with a disease, they cant make power. Youre giving them a new battery. Thats a therapy. I think thats a humane ethical thing to do, said Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center.

Where we get into the sticky part is, what if you get past transplanting batteries and start to say, While were at it, why dont we make you taller, stronger, faster or smarter?

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel concluded two days of hearings into the technique Wednesday. The panel discussed what controls might be used in trials, how a developing embryo might be monitored during those tests and who should oversee the trials, but no decisions were made at the end of the session.

Mitochondrial problems are inherited from the mother. In the procedure under discussion in Washington for the past two days, genetic material from the nucleus of a mothers egg or an embryo gets transferred to a donor egg or embryo thats had its nuclear DNA removed.

The new embryo will contain nuclear DNA from the intended father and mother, as well as healthy mitochondrial DNA from the donor embryo effectively creating a three-parent baby.

In June, Britain took a step toward becoming the first country to allow the technique. One in 6,500 babies in the United Kingdom is born with mitochondrial disorder, which can lead to serious health issues such as heart and liver disease.

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FDA weighs 3-parent baby in vitro technique to prevent disease