Biology Newsfeed

Ethics Panel Endorses Mitochondrial Therapy, But Says Start With Male Embryos

Slashdot: Science - Fetched: February 3rd, 2016, 5:00pm UTC

sciencehabit writes: An experimental assisted reproduction technique that could allow some families to avoid having children with certain types of heritable disease should be allowed to go forward in the United States, provided it proceeds slowly and cautiously. That is the conclusion of a report released today from a panel organized by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), which assesses the ethics questions surrounding the controversial technique called mitochondrial DNA replacement therapy. More controversially, however, the panel recommended that only altered male embryos should be used to attempt a pregnancy, to limit the possible risks to future generations. (Males can't pass along the mitochondrial DNA that is altered in the procedure.)pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Ethics+Panel+Endorses+Mitochondrial+Therapy%2C+But+Says+Start+With+Male+Embryos%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1QdfgR7"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F16%2F02%2F03%2F200256%2Fethics-panel-endorses-mitochondrial-therapy-but-says-start-with-male-embryos%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a class="nobg" href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/02/03/200256/ethics-panel-endorses-mitochondrial-therapy-but-says-start-with-male-embryos?utm_source=slashdotamp;utm_medium=googleplus" onclick="javascript:window.open(this.href,'', 'menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,height=600,width=600');return false;"img src="http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" alt="Share on Google+"//a /div/ppa href="http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/02/03/200256/ethics-panel-endorses-mitochondrial-therapy-but-says-start-with-male-embryos?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~4/lrH9iIHuA7k" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Read more

Return to the Newsfeed