Three parent babies

[Lord Saru]

Off late, a lot of news are pumped into the internet abyss about three parent baby. While the technique ia difficult to explain, it basically produces a baby with the fathers DNA and two mothers DNA.

Its touted as a solution to parents suffering from mitochondrial disease who want to concieve. What are the ethical problems you think a three parent baby will be facing.

 

[catgirl]

I don't think there are any ethical problems at the three parties enter into a consensual contract. As long as all three parties consent to the terms of a well-written agreement why should I criticize them? The only problems I can think of is if an agreement is written to trick one of the parities in-order to deprive them of benefits they believed they would have had, this applies to any contract though and isn't specific to three-parent babies. Meanwhile the benefits outweigh the risks as long as everything is done safely as possible and all parties consent

 

[Lord Saru]

There are,I believe, a lot of ethical concerns. I will list three of them crossing my mind now.

1. Since we are using three DNA fragments, we are unsure of what DNA characters get expressed. Thousands of surrogate babies are left homeless when the parents are unapproving of the baby.

2. It going to make things difficult in case of paternity dispute settlement through DNA fingerprinting and it will also open a new pandora box of maternal disputes.

3. A three parent baby technique is still not fool proof. Who even knows what we are dealing with?

 

[catgirl]

There are,I believe, a lot of ethical concerns. I will list three of them crossing my mind now.

1. Since we are using three DNA fragments, we are unsure of what DNA characters get expressed. Thousands of surrogate babies are left homeless when the parents are unapproving of the baby.

2. It going to make things difficult in case of paternity dispute settlement through DNA fingerprinting and it will also open a new pandora box of maternal disputes.

3. A three parent baby technique is still not fool proof. Who even knows what we are dealing with?

1. Valid point

2. I agree here, contract law and good attorneys would be needed ahead of time to write an agreement that blocks maternal disputes such as this. Perhaps some sort of adoption agreement that's irrevokable. I don't know enough about law to explain how such an agreement would work though.

3. Valid point. Science will tell as time moves on.

Overrall good points to keep in mind, hopefully solutions to these problems can be worked out as time moves on

 

[Lord Saru]

I dont think very positively about the contarcts being made fool proof. We have had all this before, but the problem is that there is no international validity to agreements being made. For example, a Belgium couple who wants to concieve can look for a surrogate mother in Myanmar, but where would the base their contract? Myanmar or Belgium?

On top of all this, there are countries which doesnot permit surrogate babies to be citizens. So the lack of complementarity is the basic issue and it require convergence of ideas and laws.