Friday, January 6, 2017

Reprotech

HR Giger's Babies, the guy who did Alien

Baby Lynlee 'born twice' after life-saving tumour surgery
BBC News, Oct 2016

They take the baby out, perform surgery on her, and put her back in for 12 weeks.

I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.

I don't know what it is about advances in reproductive technology, but it always seems to scare the sh** out of me, like the three-people babies stuff.

For those who aren't up to it yet, "three-people babies" are when the mitochondrial DNA of one mother is implanted in another mother (who's mDNA is no good), which results in an organism with DNA from three people, which is totally unprecedented in life as we know it.

Gene Therapy To Prevent Inherited Diseases May Cause Other Ills
NPR, Jan 2017

On the dangers of using mitochondrial transplants:

"When the mother's nucleus is transferred, it's like a plant dug up out of ground — a bit of the original soil (in this case, the mother's mitochondria) is still clinging to the roots. That creates a situation that never happens in nature: Two different mitochondrial genomes from two different women are forced to live inside the same cell. In most cases, a tiny percentage (usually less than 2 percent) of the diseased mitochondria remain — but that tiny percentage can really matter."

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