Push for three-parent technique in Australia to save babies from mitochondrial disease
/Scientists are pushing to overhaul human cloning laws in Australia so they can use DNA from three different people to create a baby when there is a risk of the child inheriting the debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial disease.
Key points:
- In the worst cases of disease children can die within days of being born
- Procedure involves replacing small amount of mother's DNA with DNA of a third parent
- Professor says it would not affect characteristics such as personality or height
Known as the three-parent procedure, it involves replacing a small amount of a mother's DNA with the DNA of a third parent.
But that would require the Australian Government to review human cloning laws — something that has already been done in the United Kingdom.
Professor David Thorburn, an expert on mitochondrial disease at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, has been watching the developments overseas closely.
"We're expecting first babies to be born through this regulated process in 2018," he said.
Professor Thorburn has been involved in the new and potentially controversial campaign by the Australian Mitochondrial Disease Foundation to allow the new IVF treatment.
"What's often referred to as a three-parent baby, we'd say it's the 2.002-person baby, if you like," he said.
He said mitochondrial patients could present in a variety of ways — such as seizures, loss of consciousness, abnormal eye movements, or respiratory arrest.
"The worst cases are children who die in the first days of life," he said.
"But it can also cause milder forms affecting vision, hearing and the hearts function, and so on."
The world's first baby using the controversial technique was a boy born last year in Mexico to Jordanian parents, New Scientist magazine reported.
Professor Thorburn said there were some people concerned about the ethics surrounding the idea of contributing DNA from separate three individuals to one child.
"[But] again I'd stress that the amount of … mitochondrial DNA is less than 1 per cent of the total DNA," he said.
"It's not thought to affect characteristics such as personality or height or other things."
'I don't want to pass this on to my child'
When 28-year-old Alice Gibbon was diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, after years of dealing with chronic pain and fatigue, she was "thrilled to finally have an answer."
"But then it was kind of shock and horror that this illness is for life and there's no treatment, and no cure right now," she said.
Ms Gibson has become one of at least 1,000 Australian sufferers of the disease, and the diagnosis forced her and her husband to make a tough decision.
"If it's in my mitochondrial DNA, we've decided that we won't have children," she said.
"Because the risk for them is that I would pass this on and the child would have it in the same kind of mild way that I do, or it could mean that they die in utero."