Is the World of ART Ready for a Ménage à Trois?

Excerpt

A ménage à trois (French for “household of three”) is a domestic arrangement in which three people having romantic and/or sexual relations with each other occupy the same household—From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

Inherited diseases caused by mitochondrial gene (mtDNA) mutations affect at least one in 5000–10,000 children and are associated with severe clinical symptoms [1]. Mitochondrial disease mainly affects children, but is also common in adults due to deteriorating mitochondrial function with age [1]. Novel reproductive techniques designed to replace mutated mtDNA in oocytes or early embryos have been proposed to prevent transmission of disease from parents to their children [2, 3]. The aim is ultimately to prevent children from inheriting genetic diseases caused by mutations in DNA housed by their mitochondria—components of cells, which produce energy. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations are relatively a common cause of progressive disorders that can be severe or even life threatening [4]. There is currently no cure for these disorders; therefore, recent research has been focused on attempting to prevent the transmission of these maternally inherited mutations. These research techniques have been referred to with several terms, including “mitochondria replacement,” “mitochondrial manipulation,” “oocyte modification,” “three-person embryos,” “three-parent babies,” and “nuclear genome transfer.” The “mitochondria replacement” is a new approach that is being researched with the goal of allowing a woman who has mutations in her mtDNA to lessen the risk of passing on inherited mitochondrial disease to her child. The techniques being developed are variations on combining the nuclear DNA from an egg of an affected woman with the mtDNA of an unaffected woman’s egg. A resulting child would possess genes from three adults, and this altered genome would be passed on to succeeding generations. …