The first baby to have the DNA of three parents has been born, and, as The Stream reports, many have blasted this as an attempt to play God. The controversial baby was born to a Jordanian couple in the country of Mexico.
Ibtisam Shaban, the baby's mother, was diagnosed with Leigh Syndrome in her mitochondrial DNA. Although Shaban had shown no symptoms of the condition, it is a fatal, hereditary disease that took two of her children, at six and eight months respectively.
According to Christian Headlines, Doctor John Zhang supervised the creation of the baby. In the scientific procedure adopted by the doctor, he removed the nucleus from Shaban's egg, and placed it in the shell of a donor's egg. This egg contained healthy mitochondrial DNA, unlike Shaban's. The 'hybrid' egg was then used to fertilize and form the baby, which thus contained DNA from three people – the mother, the father, and the donor.
Dr. Trevor Stammers, Program Director in Bioethics and Medical Law at St. Mary's University, explained that even if these "three-parent" babues were born, they would require monitoring for their entire lives, as well as any children they had in the future.
"We do not yet know the interaction between the mitochondria and nuclear DNA. To say that it is the same as changing a battery is facile. It's an extremely complex thing," Dr. Stammers continued.
Critics, on the other hand, are afraid that experimenting with DNA suggests that man has taken it too far, and is trying to "play God."
British MP Fiona Bruce, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, noted, "These regulations would authorize the crossing of a rubicon for the first time. It would authorize germ line therapy – to alter the genes of an individual. This is something defined by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as effectively constituting eugenics."
