‘Three Parent Baby’

Britain is set to become the first country in the world to allow doctors to use a controversial IVF technique that would lead to the creation of babies with three parents.

The technique, which involves using DNA of three persons, will help combat genetic problems that can cause rare and debilitating conditions affecting the heart, muscles and brain.The method aimed at eradicating inherited genetic defects — was safe and its benefits outweighed ethical objections

The first “three-parent baby” could be born as early as 2015 if the proposal, approved by the government on Friday June 28,2013 is given the go-ahead by Parliament. 

Professor Doug Turnbull of Newcastle University, who pioneered the technique, said he was “delighted” that it had been given the green light.

Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, hailed it as a “ground-breaking” procedure saying that “mitochondrial disease can have a devastating impact on people who inherit it”

About In vitro fertilisation (IVF)

• In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body:in vitro. The term in vitro from the Latin means in glass 

• IVF is a major treatment for infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. 

• The process involves monitoring a woman's ovulatory process, removing ovum or ova (egg or eggs) from the woman's ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a fluid medium in a laboratory

• When a woman's natural cycle is monitored to collect a naturally selected ovum (egg) for fertilisation, it is known as natural cycle IVF

• The fertilised egg (zygote) is then transferred to the patient's uterus with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy

• The first successful birth of a "Test Tube Baby", Louise Brown, occurred in 1978. Louise Brown was born as a result of natural cycle IVF

• Rober G Edwards,the physiologist who developed the treatment, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine