Doctors’ concern at Greek child born to three parents

A BABY has been born using the DNA of a “second mother” to allow an infertile woman to become pregnant in a procedure that has been criticised by scientists and the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Britain became the first country in the world to legalise so-called threeparent babies to help women avoid passing on deadly hereditary diseases.

Until this week, only one child has been born so far from the technique, in Mexico, but on Wednesday Greek and Spanish doctors announced they had used the controversial procedure to help an infertile woman have a baby.

The team took genetic material from the egg of the mother-to-be and inserted it into another woman’s egg before fertilising it with the father’s sperm and implanting the resulting embryo in the first woman.

The baby, born on Wednesday, weighed 6.5lb and was delivered by a 32-year-old Greek woman who had undergone several unsuccessful attempts at in-vitro fertilisation, Greece’s Institute of Life said in a statement.

But the HFEA said such an experimental procedure should only be carried out when there was no other option. A spokesman for the UK fertility regulator said: “There is limited evidence on risks and success rates, and it should only be used cautiously in cases where alternative treatments would be of little or no benefit.”

In the Mexican case, the mother had been suffering from Leigh syndrome, a rare illness that affects the developing nervous system and can be fatal.

In her case, the disorder had previously caused the deaths of two of her children.

But although the Greek woman had failed to conceive four times through IVF, British doctors said she may have been successful had she kept going.

Tim Child, an Oxford University professor and medical director of the Fertility Partnership, said: “I’m concerned that there’s no proven need for the patient to have her genetic material removed from her eggs and transferred into the eggs of a donor. The risks of the technique are not entirely known, though may be considered acceptable if being used to treat mitochondrial disease, but not in this situation.

“The patient may have conceived even if a further standard IVF cycle had been used. Without a proper, well-designed study, with the use of controls, it is not possible to say whether this technique has benefited the patient.”

Dr Nuno Costa-borges, of the Institute of Life, said: “This exceptional result will help countless women to realise their dream of becoming mothers with their own genetic material.”