Whats Wrong With Three-Parent Embryos - the Controversial Three-Parent IVF that is Becoming Legal in Britain?

Excerpts from: How Ought We To Treat Human Life? Bioethics & the Human Person Undergraduate Philosophy Thesis By: Julia Bolzon Three-parent embryos. This IVF-based technique involves combining three sets of DNA that of two parents plus a donor. The procedure involves the transfer of the nucleus of the mothers ovum into an enucleated ovum of a donor woman, which is then fertilized by the first womans husband.1 The reason for this transfer is to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease for couples at risk, which is an incurable, inherited condition maternally passed on to around 1 in 6,500 children worldwide. 2 Mitochondrial disease conditions include fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness, and muscular weakness. 3 The mitochondrial replacement therapy procedure aims to re-house the genetic information of the mother (who has faulty mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in her egg), into a donor egg with healthy mtDNA. The result is that nuclear genetic information from the affected mother is housed in a donor egg with unaffected mtDNA, so the affected mother can have a biological child without passing on the disease. However, the resulting child will carry the DNA of three, not two, parents, and will also have tampered-with DNA that will forever be passed down to ensuing generations. A further ethical complication is the means in which this process is done. Either the affected mothers genetic information is transferred to another womans egg, and then fertilized with the fathers sperm, as described above (see Method 1), or through the means of pronuclear transfer,
Ahuja, Anjana. Three Parents? Five Parents? All That Really Matters is Healthy Babies. The Telegraph. March 21, 2013. Accessed at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/9946441/Three-parents-Five-parentsAll-that-really-matters-is-healthy-babies.html; cf. Somerville, Margaret. The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit. Anasai Press, 2006. Pp 126-7. 2 Kelland, Kate. Three-Parent Embryos Unnerve Ethicists. The Globe and Mail. September 19, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/three-parent-embryos-unnerve-ethicists/article4553114/ 3 ibid
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which occurs not between two eggs, but between two embryos (Method 2).4 Apparently, transferring the genetic information to the un-affected donor egg prior to fertilization results in increased chromosomal abnormalities during the embryos division, which are less likely to occur with pronuclear transfer.5 In the latter, IVF techniques are used to create an embryo (a fertilized egg) between the intended parents, containing the affected womans faulty mtDNA. A second donor embryo is created from a donor womans egg and (usually donor) sperm. At the one-cell stage of development, the pro-nuclei of both embryos are removed: the parents nucleus is transferred into the enucleated donor embryo, and the donor embryo nucleus (as well as the parents enucleated embryo) is destroyed.6 The resulting embryo now contains the pronuclear DNA from the intending parents, and healthy mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg. What constitutes an ethical or unethical use of non-natural biotechnical intervention on human life? The answer lies in considering the ramifications of the means and the end result on respect for human life, in combination with the outcome or consequences of such a course of action. For instance, certain forms of IVF treatment, including three-parent IVF, require the creation of numerous embryos, but not all of them are created for the purpose of implantation. This widespread phenomenon has been dubbed as snowflake babies, after the idea that each embryo is as unique as a snowflake. In Britain, tens of thousands of snowbabies are stored on ice, with indefinite futures, after being created through the numerous rounds of IVF treatments. Parents are then faced with the agonizing decision of what to do with their snowbabies: either use them to become impregnated, donate them to research, have them adopted by other parents, or left on ice to eventually be destroyed. 7 It is remarkable that individuals, families, and whole societies can acknowledge that human embryos are indeed unique and individual, as is apparently each and every snowflake, by virtue of their unique and unrepeatable DNA sequence formed through genetic recombination, but at the same time, knowingly proceed with fertility treatments that invariably result in bringing these unique human lives into being, only to have them thwarted. Specifically, the pronuclear transfer technique involved in the procedure of three-parent IVF for the purpose of preventing mitochondrial disease requires that a donor embryo be created in order to have its own nucleus destroyed so that it can house the nucleus of the intending parents child. This is a direct instance where human life is transmitted (created; brought into existence) with no intention of giving the embryo any chance to develop further so that it can flourish, (i.e. with the intention of immediately ending its life). These acts contravene the respect that all human life deserves in each and every basic act, and for that reason, ought not to be done. Furthermore, instances of creating human life solely for the purpose of making
Image from: Gallagher, James. Three People, One Baby Public Consultation Begins. BBC News: Health. September 16, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19597856 5 Coghlan, Andy. Three-Parent Embryo Could Prevent Inherited Disease. New Scientist. October 25, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22425-threeparent-embryo-could-prevent-inheriteddisease.html 6 Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Background: Pronuclear Transfer (PNT). Accessed at: http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/mitochondrial-donation/mitochondrial-donation-background-pronucleartransfer-pnt; Gallagher, James. Three People, One Baby Public Consultation Begins. BBC News: Health. September 16, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19597856 7 Saunders, Anna. IVF: The Hidden Story of Britains Snowbabies. The Telegraph. August 23rd, 2010. Accessed at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7948027/IVF-the-hidden-story-of-Britains-snowbabies.html
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therapeutic products or for experimentation (as is the case here, but also in therapeutic cloning), is to use human life as a means to an end, i.e. as an object. To call this permissible rests on an assumption that we own life, and therefore can treat it as we wish, and also means that the transmission of human life can now be undertaken for commercial goals.8 But in both these cases, the inherent value and worth of human life is undermined and overthrown for purposes that make life into a commodity to be used, not one to be preserved or protected.

Somerville, Margaret. The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit. Anasai Press, 2006. Pp 142, 141.