I stumbled upon this article about so-called “three-parent babies” in Bio Detectives:
http://biodetectives.co.uk/news/perspective-on-three-parent-children/
After our class discussion on the importance of conveying scientific progress to the public, this seemed like a great example of the right way to communicate.
The article was published after the hugely media-covered legalization of “three-parent babies” in the UK. It is a response to the concerns of the general public about this new fertilization procedure – concerns sparked by the Church of England deeming it “irresponsible” and “of grave concern”. Using simple terminology while still providing all necessary background information, this article explains the science behind the procedure and the arguments for and against.
“Three-parent babies” are created to save families form inheritable mitochondrial diseases. The pronuclei of the mother oocyte is inserted into a donor egg (with the pronucleus removed) prior to in vitro fertilization with sperm from the father. As a result, the embryo will have nuclear genome from the parents and mitochondrial genome from the donor – the “third parent”. This way, women with mutations in their mitochondrial DNA can have children without the risk of disease.
A lot of apprehension stemmed from the term “three-parent baby”, which sounds unnatural. The article set out to shed light on the actual genetics (that mitochondrial DNA is 0.1% of the genome), using analogies to commonly known therapeutics:
“I guess you could argue that this gives you three parents only to the same extent that an organ transplant makes you two people…”
Most people can relate to the concept of organ transplants. While making this comparison, the authors make sure to state the differences explicitly:
“…the change you make to the children produced by this technique will be passed on to these children’s children, and so on (only if the offspring is female – remember mitochondria are only passed on by the mother)”.
The way they quickly recap how mitochondrial heritage works is subtle, non-condescending and well placed, in case the reader didn’t remember from the introduction.
Scientific concerns, such as increased cancer susceptibility of the children, as well as social concerns of our way towards designer babies, are addressed with reason and humor:
“In order to produce a ‘designer baby’ the nuclear DNA would have to be changed, and that is still completely illegal. It is also a moot point, because you could argue that almost any genetic research […] could facilitate someone one day producing a designer baby. In which case, someone hop in a time machine and pop and tell Mendel to stick to praying and just eat his peas, instead of using them for research!”
After reading this article, every non-geneticist will have sufficient knowledge on the science and the ethics behind this phenomenon to create their own opinion. The authors achieved this by explaining the science with simple language and analogies, while addressing the concerns with a mix of reason and humor.