Photograph by Chris Bolin
WASHINGTON — Advisers to the U.S. government say in a new report that it’s ethical to test a new pregnancy procedure — creating babies from the DNA of three people — in hopes of preventing the passing along of devastating genetic diseases.
At issue is a kind of DNA that children inherit only from mothers: genes inside their mitochondria, the energy factories in cells. The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to allow testing of a way to create embryos by swapping a mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy genetic material from a donor egg.
In a report Wednesday, the Institute of Medicine said any such research must follow strict safety steps — including limiting first pregnancy attempts to male embryos. That’s because males can’t pass along this kind of alteration.
