Ukraine pioneers ‘3-parent’ babies
kiev — A 34-year-old woman tried to have a baby for 15 years before she turned to a pioneering doctor in Ukraine and a groundbreaking but ethically disputed “three-parent” procedure.
She became the mother of a healthy baby boy in January at a private clinic in Kiev using a process called pronuclear transfer that inserts the couple’s genes into a donor’s egg. The procedure had been previously used to treat serious genetic diseases. But doctor Valeriy Zukin become the first to use it to help two separate infertile couples have children in this way. “There are patients whom we cannot help to have their own genetically-related baby unless we use this method,” the 60-year-old told.
Some two million women across the globe use in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to get pregnant every year.
But Zukin’s treatment targets a tiny percentage of women whose embryos suffer from a disorder called embryo arrest that can either stunt development or kill them. The difference in the method Zukin uses is that a woman’s egg is first fertilised with her partner’s sperm. Then its nucleus is transferred to a donor’s egg that has been stripped of its own nucleus.
The egg is thus almost entirely made up of genetic material from the couple — plus a tiny amount (about 0.15 per cent) from the female donor’s DNA. Not everyone however shares Zukin’s enthusiasm. Conservative clerics argue that the technique breaches ethical norms. “A child can only have two parents and the presence of a third person is morally unacceptable,” Father Feodosiy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said.