A married couple arabs migrated to the united States looking for solution to a terrible problem: for more than ten years tried to have children without success, because they died before or after birth. With the time they discovered that the mother had a genetic disorder that denied this possibility and decided to undergo a treatment that combines the DNA of three people that allowed that, by the end, the couple had a healthy baby.
The announcement took several months while the doctors assured that the baby is not having any health problem. The child was born on the 6th of April and was treated by fertility specialists americans, led by John Zhang, New Hope Fertility Center in New York.
For ten years the couple, originally from Jordan, she tried all means to conceive a child, and although they succeeded on more than one occasion, the mother had a rare disease that caused the death of children. The first of them lost in the first of four miscarriages. Then, the couple managed to give birth to a baby girl in 2005, but died at six years of age. The last attempt was a second baby, although it did manage to be born, she lived only for eight months. The examinations in the mother indicated that she was healthy, but his genes were killing their children.
The mother of the child has genes of a rare degenerative condition called Leigh syndrome, which damages the nervous system of developing babies. The flaws affect the DNA of the mitochondria, the "little battery" that provides energy to the cells and are transmitted from mother to child.
When the couple went to the medical center, the doctors decided to test a controversial technique with the hope they could have a healthy baby. However, had a problem: they could not do so in the united States, but should do so in a place where it would not have legal problems. They went to Mexico.
Although many experts welcomed the news, others expressed their concern about the ethical debate that represents, above all, the fact that the doctors had been moved to another country to carry out the procedure and thus avoid any regulatory framework.
In an interview with the magazine New Scientist, dr. Zhang stated that he traveled to Mexico because there was "no rules" and insisted that he has no regret of having done so. "Saving lives is ethically correct," he said.
The procedure, known as transfer mitochondrial, is addressed to couples who have a high risk of transmitting genetic diseases debilitating and even fatal to their children. The technique was legalised last year in the Uk, but until now, no other country has formulated laws that allow for their realization.
When the couple sought help in Zheng, the doctor decided to try the transfer, mitochondrial. Took the core of one of the eggs of the mother and inserted it into an egg from a donor who had removed the nucleus. Then fertilized with the sperm of the husband.
doctors, they created five embryos, but only one of them was developed with normality. It was implanted in the mother and the baby was born nine months later, after a pregnancy completely normal and smooth.
But this baby is not the first to be born with DNA from three people. In the nineties, some doctors of fertility tried to improve the egg quality of women in the inyectarles cytoplasm, the cellular material that contains mitochondria from donor eggs healthy. This procedure led to the birth of several babies with the DNA of the parents and the donor. However, some of them developed genetic disorders and the procedure was banned.
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