The first tri-parental baby in the world is born
The first baby in the world conceived through a tri-parental technique is born in Mexico. There are no details about this birth, revealed before the scientific congress of the American Society for the Reproductive Medicine that is scheduled to take place in October in Salt Lake City. According to the critics, the procedure is the equivalent of the genetic modifications upon the people. They say that this method allows the women with genetic affections to have healthy babies. The New Scientist magazine reveals that the name of the baby is Abrahim Hassan and he is 5 months old. His parents are from Jordan and the birth was the result of a USA scientists team work.
The Abrahim’s mother suffers from the Leigh syndrome, a lethal affection that affects the nervous system and that would have been transmitted to the child through the mitochondrial DNA. The technique used by the doctor John Zhang’s team from the New Hope fertilization clinic in New York consists in taking one of the mother’s oocytes, having DNA content, and its implantation into an oocyte of a donor woman, from which the nucleus was extracted, but the mitochondrial DNA was kept. Zhang stated that the team had to make its activity in Mexico, where are no regulations, while the tri-parental technique was not approved in the USA.
Dusko Ilic from the King’s College in London says that the baby was born without problems and that this mitochondrial donation is an innovative discovery. He also added that the team of scientists hopes that the critics from the genetics domain will criticize less and be the witnesses of the first birth after a mitochondrial donation in the UK, instead. Still, the doctor says that there are some uncleared things. He added that this birth may be risky, but, because it was a success, the critics of the mitochondrial donation will have less arguments against it.