Controversial ’Three-Parent Baby’ Fertility Technique Takes Off in Mexico City Jan-Albert Hootsen - Fox News Health
go to original May 9, 2017

What Is the Three Parent Baby Method? (Fortune Magazine)

Sitting in his spotless office in the New Hope Fertility Clinic in Mexico City, soft music playing in the hallway in the background, Doctor Alejandro Chávez-Badiola shows an affable smile. “’Three-parent babies’ is not the title I would have chosen for the treatment,” the clinic director says. “But if the press had not given it such an attractive title, the news of what we’re doing probably would not have had such an impact.”

Indeed, “three-parent baby” is easier to remember than “mitochondrial replacement treatment” (MRT), a relatively new procedure offered to couples who want to reduce the chance of passing certain genetic diseases onto their children.

It is controversial because the embryo takes eggs from two mothers.

Pregnancies through MRT, which is banned in the U.S., are achieved by transferring the nucleus from a mother’s egg to a donor egg, which in turn had its nucleus removed. The new egg is then fertilized by the father’s sperm and ultimately placed in the mother’s uterus.

Mexico City’s New Hope is a branch of a namesake New York City fertility clinic founded by John Zhang in 2014.  Critics say New Hope picked Mexico merely because of its weak regulatory framework.

Dr. Chávez-Badiola, a gynecologist and obstetrician trained in Mexico and the United Kingdom, told Fox News he hopes to apply MRT to 20 pregnancies in the first half of 2017. He would not disclose, however, how many three-way pregnancies are underway at this time.

The first “three-parent” baby was conceived in Mexico’s New Hope in 2015 but delivered in New York City last year. He was born to a Jordanian couple at risk of reproducing a rare disorder called Leigh disease, an incurable that can lead to a child’s death within years from birth.

The Jordanian couple was treated in the New Hope clinic in Mexico by a U.S. team led by Dr. Zhang. So far, the boy appears to be healthy, according to New Hope, and the successful procedure led Chávez-Badiola and his peers to the conclusion that their work should be extended to a larger number of couples in Mexico.

Read the rest at Fox News Health

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