(The Federalist)—“How are babies made?” is an age-old question that has sent centuries of parents scrambling for an answer. The go-to explanation, of course, goes something like “Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much…” A new in vitro fertilization experiment that yielded eight “healthy” live births after injecting purchased eggs with the DNA of a man and another woman, however, threatens to invalidate that reliable response.
Researchers in the United Kingdom, which rearranged its laws in 2015 to accommodate the “pronuclear transfer” trials, pitched their “three-person IVF” experiment as a means to lessen the chances of mitochondrial mutations that lead to genetic disorders in infants conceived via IVF.
Corporate media outlets across the globe, such as The Guardian and Financial Times, echoed those talking points in their coverage of the venture.
In a largely unregulated landscape like that of the U.S., however, it’s easy to see how a procedure promoted as a way to reduce the risk of life-threatening diseases can easily become a cover for something far more sinister, such as eugenics.
In this particular case, the UK researchers’ success in producing live babies born of three people’s DNA no doubt opens the door for bringing more people into the sacred act of reproduction.
- Read More: thefederalist.com
