FDA weighs evidence on producing 'three-parent' embryos

Over two days of public hearings starting on Tuesday, scientists were scheduled to present their research to outside advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency will decide whether safety concerns raised by three-parent IVF are minimal enough to allow clinical trials to begin. The committee is focusing only on the science, not the legal or ethical issues, Celia Witten of the FDA's Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies said in comments introducing the hearing. But if the mother carries harmful genetic mutations in cellular structures called mitochondria, scientists would remove her unhealthy mitochondria and substitute those of a second woman so the baby would not inherit a potentially devastating "mitochondrial disease." Allowing such procedures "would produce genetically modified human beings," Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Berkeley, California-based Center for Genetics and Society, a non-profit that focuses on genetic and reproductive technologies, told the committee.



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