Our allies the Brits announce: Embryo with two mothers approved this week by Her Majesty the Queen’s government, or more precisely the bureaucracy established as the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. Hey, the BBC started this headline hyperbole race so I am merely upping the emotional ante.
UK scientists have won permission to create a human embryo that will have genetic material from two mothers.Well technically yes. The work involves taking the nucleus of a normal male – female fertilized cell and replacing the surrounding cellular fluid with that from another female to avoid the mitochondrial DNA from the initial egg. Lead researcher Doug Turnbull puts the matter more concisely saying he is not altering the human DNA. "We are simply changing the energy source."
Professor Azim Surani, professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge University, said: "I see few ethical problems as we are dealing with the embryo at a very early stage where the cells haven't even started to divide yet."I am not going to quibble about whether a single cell is an embryo or an egg, but the take away point is that the technology for designer humans exists. The question is how fast it becomes perfected. How long did it take from Wilbur and Orville on the sand dunes to Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar dust? Bonus question: Under a system of taxpayer funded Universal Healthcare, who pays the medical bill for designer Barbie?
