General / Off-Topic Three parents. Good or bad?

Quddus · Feb 3, 2015

I don't mean the aliens we may or may not meet in Elite someday.

I mean the end to mitochondrial inherited diseases.

Genetic material from three parents.

Yes or No?

(I'm going to play devil's advocate to whatever the prevailing view is, just for the sake of good discussion. I don't particularly mind either way

)

Ulysses_W · Feb 3, 2015

My initial gut reaction was going to be "No, NEVAH! its unnatural!!!". But when I consider that most of my life is surrounded by 'unnatural' stuff anyway, I figure if it can help people do something they wouldn't normally be able to do, then its fine by me.

Cheapchips · Feb 3, 2015

We have two lovely children thanks to double donors.

The three parents thing doesn't resonate with me at all. In our family there's two parents, two kids. Two very kindly donors four years ago allowed us to be a family. That's as far as it goes for their involvement.

Mitochondria DNA donation as part of assisted reproduction doesn't like a big deal to me in that context.

I'm not on-board with the designer baby slippery slope argument. No significant portion of the population would want to go through ivf by choice. it's really not that much fun.

Ben_BigBen · Feb 3, 2015

Pure scaremongering, it's more like a kidney donation than gene splicing. People need to go away and learn what function the mitochondria perform.

Groowie · Feb 3, 2015

I'd say neither good nor bad but simply acceptable, at least for me. We tend to forget that this is (from my understanding) for a greater good (of newborn children to come and henceforth of future generations).

Quddus · Feb 3, 2015

I agree, which means having to take the difficult devil's advocate position, but as promised let's do it. Yes mitochondria are pretty much a symbiotic separate organism so to use another set of mitochondria is absolutely fine in this case but the problem is the slippery slope towards designer babies.

Let's assume IVF would the only way of achieving genetic manipulation. Nobody would want to go through IVF by choice, yes that's true..*currently*. Because *currently* it's offered to distressed people who can't conceive and so they'd rather not be in that circumstance if they had the choice. In a designer baby world though I think that's a very brave statement to make. Yes some might be put off by it (assuming it remains a cumbersome IVF process) but significant numbers of people will undoubtedly use it. If I wasn't incredibly good looking, intelligent, witty, and perfect in every way, even I would consider it

So the slippery slope concern is a real one. Some of you may not think it will happen, but you can't dismiss it.

Furthermore mitochondrial diseases are relatively rare. Is it worth opening Pandora's box to help stop a rare condition?

Slawkenbergius · Feb 3, 2015

Sounds good, as long they don't accidentally mix up their samples and extract genetic material from a fly... People shouldn't be put off from having children due to genetic concerns. Except siblings, etc.

Dogmeat · Feb 3, 2015

It's a good thing. And it isn't 'Three parents'; that's just tabloid and holy-man scaremongering. No slippery slope, no designer babies, nothing to see here. Mitochondrial DNA does not affect anything except your Mitochondria; not your personality, not your IQ; nothing.

I find it depressing how these advances bring out the quasi-religious and luddite instincts in so many otherwise intelligent people. I wonder how many rational journalists think "Oh, God, we don't really have to run this rubbish, do we?"

colinhewitt · Feb 3, 2015

It's all good

Quddus · Feb 4, 2015

Ok let me add some perspective then...

Years down the line when you're woken up in the middle of the night by a deformed twisted multi-parent humanoid with fiery red eyes, six legs and seven claws on each limb slashing at your throat with his sharp three rows of fangs ripping you apart, will you then be so happy to be pro genetic experimentation or will you come back to this thread and think "Aah, that Quddus acting as (devil's advocate) was right..." ?

Cheapchips · Feb 8, 2015

That isn't so different to parenting normal toddlers

Dogmeat · Feb 11, 2015

Quddus said:
Ok let me add some perspective then...

Years down the line when you're woken up in the middle of the night by a deformed twisted multi-parent humanoid with fiery red eyes, six legs and seven claws on each limb slashing at your throat with his sharp three rows of fangs ripping you apart, will you then be so happy to be pro genetic experimentation or will you come back to this thread and think "Aah, that Quddus acting as (devil's advocate) was right..." ?

Any powerful tool can be used to do great harm; it can also do great good, such as by using gene therapy to yes, alter our DNA, and 'cure' a whole range of untreatable diseases and afflictions. I think the suspicion around every new technological development comes from a luddite or quasi-religious instinct in us that may be entirely sincere but doesn't bear up to serious examination and therefore has no critical value. We have much better things to worry about in this day and age, at any rate.

firmicute · Mar 17, 2015

Depends on the parents? like everythimg, if you have cool people, It´ll work-not necessary easy, but hey, nothing is easy and the 50% divorce rate(or something like that) is there for a reason.

So i know a Triad (1 woman, 2 men, she is married to one of them) that is together for at least 9 years now, so it can work if you are the kind of person for it.
It wont work for everyone, sooo

Also, well, only the mitochondrial.. so there is a lot more diseases that wont benefot from that