There are suspicions that the babies born thanks to the mitochondrial transfer (3 parent IVF) in Mexico with the help of US doctors and in Ukraine thanks to the operation of Dr Valery Zukin have not the first babies born using this method. It is probably China to apply this method as the first country.
Mitochondrial transfer in Mexico and Ukraine
Recently many people have heard about the boy born in Mexico with the use of healthy donor DNA. American doctors helped a Jordanian couple whose children died very early after the birth. It happened because a woman suffered from a rare genetic disease. Thanks to mitochondrial transfer the doctors didn’t allow the disease affect the pregnancy and a healthy baby boy was born.
In the other case Dr Valery Zulkin in Ukraine helped two infertile women using the same method that resulted in two healthy pregnancies. He used the method not to avoid inheriting the genetic disease by children but simply to increase the chances of getting pregnant via IVF treatments.
Did China use the three parent technique first?
Both of those cases turn out might not be the first ones of a baby being born thanks to the mitochondrial transfer. The report published by the Nature journal shows that a child was born in China using the same technique. Sara Reardon, a reporter at the Nature journal, found out that there are claims that a child was born in China using the mitochondrial transfer.
At first the method was supposed to be used as a way to avoid the genetic diseases being passed on the children. However, now we can see that it is already used for other purposes than that. We hope the mitochondrial transfer will be used responsibly and think that advancements in assisted reproduction techniques should not be a case of a „armaments race“
