However, Conservative MP Fiona Bruce who opposed the motion told the Commons more time was needed to consider the issues.
“One of these procedures we are asked to approve today, pronuclear transfer, involves the deliberate creation and destruction of at least two human embryos, and probably in practice many more, in order to create a third embryo which it is hoped will be free from human mitochondrial disease,” she said.
“Are we happy to sacrifice two early human lives to make a third?”
Health experts have argued that three-person IVF could eliminate defects in the mitochondria which can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, heart, kidney and liver failure. Others, however, think it crosses a boundary and have warned against tampering with DNA.
Mitochondria are the tiny, biological “power stations” that give the body energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child.
The techniques would likely only be used in about a dozen British women every year who have faulty mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell’s nucleus. To fix that, scientists remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the nucleus DNA has been removed. This can be done either before or after fertilization.
The resulting embryo would end up with the nucleus DNA from its parents but the mitochondrial DNA from the donor. Scientists say the DNA from the donor egg amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryo’s genes.
Additional reporting from The Associated Press.
Article Appeared @http://mashable.com/2015/02/03/britain-three-person-babies/?utm_cid=hp-hh-sec