The many - the better?

Three parents and a disease-free baby

The upside of having three genetic parents

 

The U.K. government will allow scientists to create babies using DNA from three different parents—a positive development, according to some researchers, for parents with mitochondrial diseases.

The controversial procedure—also called mitochondrial replacement—is possible through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Mitochondrial diseases like muscular dystrophy affect about one in 5,000 people worldwide, so only a very small group of people would be interested in such a procedure, Virginia Hughes writes in Popular Science. The procedure would "be performed at a few select clinics in the U.K. and will be carefully monitored...[a]nd if not safe, it will most likely be banned."