I Really Cant See What The Problem Is.

[dave50]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31069173

[ummmm]

Nor can I as long as it's only used for medical purposes.

[Hopkirk]

Don't forget the law of unintended consequences.

Mother nature has a habit of biting back hard if you mess with her.

[jim360]

The problem with those arguing against is that many, if not all, of their arguments could be made without having the faintest idea what the heck they're even talking about. "This is a bold step that could have unintended consequences", "Nobody can predict the future", "There are potentially unseen risks", etc etc.

[mikey4444]

There isn't a problem dave50, as today's vote has shown !

But the Church of England and the Catholic Church seem to think there is.
But they should be ignored, as they usually are on these kind of issues. They are a complete irrelevance in today's Britain.

[Hopkirk]

I am not religious - I don't believe there is a god.

However I don't think we should be meddling like this - it is dangerous territory and could lead on to things we will regret.

[mikey4444]

Hopkirk...you have expressed a view, which I appreciate is a personal one.
But have you read the link ?

"The technique, which was developed in Newcastle, should help women like Sharon Bernardi, from Sunderland, who lost all seven of her children to mitochondrial disease"

If this procedure can help prevent this, I am at a loss to see what is wrong with it ?

[Hopkirk]

They thought thalidomide was safe

[dave50]

Hopkirk - I suppose any kind of medical treatment could be considered 'meddling',

[jim360]

There is simply no comparison between the two. Not least because of the passage of time since.

[Peter Pedant]

Listen to Jacob Rees Mogg
and after three seconds you will realise what the problem was

him !

[mikey4444]

PP....I heard that pompous *** being interviewed on the Today Program this morning and how that poor women who was interviewed at the same time kept her temper is a mystery to me ! She brought in her baby to the Studio and it was heart-rending to hear that she will not survive for much longer.

The last thing that the woman needed this morning was to listen to Rees-Mogg !

[Cloverjo]

My initial thought was "well, why not?" We already have artificial methods of making babies.
But who knows what damage could be done to the eggs or embryos and resulting babies as a consequence of such an operation?
I feel for the woman who lost seven babies, but if she wants to bear a child herself, why doesn't she take a whole donor egg? I know it wouldn't have her DNA, but does that really matter?
I think this is a step too far in mucking about with nature.

[chaptazbru2]

All tories are pompous in my opinion, it comes with the job !

[naomi24]

I was in two minds about this until I listened to a discussion on it today when someone compared it to the moral implications of a liver or heart transplant. That made some sense to me. If it results in babies with a mere 0.1% of their DNA from the second woman – presumably anonymous - and eliminates a disease that would otherwise be passed down through the generations, it has to be a good thing.

[jourdain2]

I can. 'Hard cases make bad laws.' David Steele's abortion act was reasonable, responsible and hedged-about with caveats - now abortion is virtually on demand. Giving power to meddle in this could lead to genetic engineering of the populace- didn't Hitler have some sort of idea like that?

[jim360]

I don't understand this "gone too far in mucking about with nature argument", or variations of that theme. That's basically what we do as a species. Sometimes it's by creating entire ecosystems, or destroying them, or introducing new medicines that would never have existed without a lab. I don't see that this is particularly different. Perhaps it's the "DNA" in the title, in which case as Naomi points about it's just not enough to fuss about really in this case; and mitochondrial DNA replacement is quite a distance away from wholesale "designer babies" or what have you.

[ummmm]

Abortion isn't on demand. A woman has to still convince two doctors.

[jno]

we've still got heavy oversight of frankenfoods, but frankenbabies are okay? It does sound a little counterintuitive.

[jim360]

In the first place jno I expect that there will be a reasonable level of supervision about when and how this procedure is applied. But it's not actually at all the same as "frankenfoods". I suppose the definition of "frankenX" is that X has been in some way genetically tampered with, by splicing small sections of entirely alien DNA into the whole. This is different -- perhaps, only technically, but it's a very important distinction to make. In this procedure the DNA being introduced is human, so already it's not "entirely alien" -- indeed, barely alien at all, or at least no more so than another person's kidney or lungs transplanted to replace damaged organs. Then it's not being spliced into the DNA, being instead a replacement of a separate component of the cell altogether. Mitochondria carry their own DNA but this plays a minimal role in inheritance, as it has very little information in comparison to "normal" DNA.

This whole procedure is just a transplant of damaged for undamaged parts of a cell. That these parts have DNA is a red herring; after all, so does any other part of someone else's body that's transplanted into another person.

There is no reasonable parallel to be drawn, then, with "frankenfoods". Even those aren't necessarily particularly bad, although the safety concerns there are more legitimate. Splicing DNA from an entirely different species into, say, a potato could well have consequences for the natural environment, and more care is needed.