Three-Way Parenthood | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views
www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37594/title/Three-Way-Parenthood/
parenthood science research ethics designer genes
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The ability to manipulate human reproduction was viewed in many circles as an attack on the traditional family and an odious attempt to assert human dominion over nature. Terms such as “designer babies” and “playing God” were commonly applied to IVF.
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prevent defective mtDNA from being passed from mother to child, scientists in the U.K. are planning to offer a “three-parent” fertility procedure.
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potential for creating children from multiple parents is not limited to the halting of the passage of mitochondrial disorders.
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these genetic engineering procedures raise both legal and ethical concerns. Legal issues include: Who are the legal parents of a child generated from genetic material obtained from multiple donors? Would such a child have the right to know the identity of all his gene donors? In an article to be published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender (in press), we propose a legal solution to address some of these issues
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many ethical concerns raised by such technologies is whether these advances in reproductive medicine could lead to the creation of “designer babies,” in which parents select the genetic composition of their children for enhancement or for health reasons. The fear in creating designer babies is that it may herald a new era of “consumer eugenics” with potentially unknown consequences for humankind.