Tot has DNA of three parents

Fertility doctors using a controversial technique developed to eliminate inherited disease have helped a woman deliver the first baby with three genetic parents.

Five-month-old Abrahim Hassan’s Jordanian mother was treated by a US team in Mexico. He was conceived from an egg containing nuclear DNA from his mother and father, and mitochondrial DNA from a “second” mother – an unknown female donor. The aim was to replace defective mitochondrial DNA that may have condemned Abrahim to Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder affecting the developing nervous system.

So far only the UK has given an official stamp of legal approval to the technique employed by the American doctors.