Doctor told to stop marketing baby technique

U.S. regulators last week warned a New York fertility doctor to stop marketing an experimental procedure that uses DNA from three people — a mother, a father and an egg donor — to avoid certain genetic diseases.

The doctor, John Zhang, used the technique to help a Jordanian couple have a baby boy last year.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, Zhang said his companies wouldn’t use the technology in the U.S. again without permission, yet they continue to promote it.

The procedure is not approved in the U.S., and Congress has barred the FDA from even reviewing proposals to conduct such experiments.

A receptionist at Zhang’s New Hope Fertility Clinic in New York said late Friday that no one was available to comment. Zhang heads the clinic and a related company, Darwin Life Inc.

New Hope’s website touts having achieved the “first live birth” using this technology, along with other advanced fertility treatments it offers. The FDA’s letter to Zhang cites several other marketing claims, including a reference to “the first proven treatment for certain genetic disorders.”

The birth of the boy was disclosed last September. The mother carries DNA that could have given her child Leigh syndrome, a severe neurological disorder that usually kills within a few years of birth.

The experimental technique involves removing some of the mother’s DNA from an egg, and leaving the disease-causing DNA behind. The healthy DNA gets slipped into a donor’s egg, which is then fertilized. As a result, the baby inherits DNA from both parents and the egg donor — producing what’s been called “three-parent babies” — though the DNA contribution from the egg donor is very small.

People carry DNA in two places, the nucleus of the cell and in structures called mitochondria, which lie outside the nucleus.