Members of England's Parliament passed legislation on Feb. 3 that allows the use of DNA from a third-party female donor to be used in a human embryo -- a new move toward eliminating genetic disease. The technique could help babies with mitochondrial disease, which affects one in every 6,500 babies and can be fatal. Mitochondria, found in nearly all of the body's cells, converts food into usable energy and contains DNA that does not affect other personal traits (such as appearance). When defective, it can lead to brain damage, heart failure, blindness and muscle wasting. The process would replace the harmful material in a woman's egg prior to conception, mixing the DNA of the two parents with a donor woman's healthy mitochondria. This procedure, however, raises a number of ethical issues and objections, as it involves experimentation with human reproduction and requires in vitro fertilization, the church's "default" argument against the technique, wrote Jack Mahoney for The Tablet. But the church also once opposed organ transplants for requiring "self-mutilation," Mahoney noted. "Few people would now accept that extremely partial analysis as an adequate description of what many rightly view as an act of human solidarity," he wrote. The distinction between … Continue reading →