World's first GM babies born

[mia]

The world's first genetically modified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three 'parents'.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey....


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-43767/Worlds-GM-babies-born.html#ixzz1z8FX5Xk2

[ohheckyeah]

1. If they can remove the

conservative gene, I'm all for it.

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

- The next series will come with bar codes for easy reference......

[HopeHoops]

3. Oh. I thought General Motors had opened up a new line.

[Honeycombe8]

8. Me, too! nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. How much difference between people do mitochondrial genes make?

Since they are theoretically perfect copies of your mother's mitochondrial genes, the variation in them is tiny. It's there, due to the occasional copying error, but how much of an effect does it have (apart from, of course, causing infertility in a few women)?

[mia]

5. Wish I could answer your question. Here's another article that talks about mitochondrial DNA.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/12/us-ivf-mitochondria-idUSBRE85A1LT20120612

...The new potential treatments involve intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can lead to a range of inherited conditions including fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular weakness.

Still at the research stage, the treatments effectively replace mitochondria, which act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells, so a baby does not inherit faults from its mother. Mitochondria are only passed down the maternal line....

[LeftishBrit]

11. Mitochondrial disorders are significant but rare

Last edited Sat Jun 30, 2012, 04:36 AM - Edit history (1)

About 1 in 4000 individuals has such a disorder - so much rarer than ordinary genetic disorders. They can lead to conditions similar to muscular dystrophy, as well as certain forms of blindness; deafness combined with diabetes; and, as has recently been discovered, some autism-like conditions.

[Zalatix]

13. Is that why daughters have fewer incidents of birth defects than sons?

[LeftishBrit]

14. It's not the main reason

Mitochondrial disorders are very rare.

The main reason for gender differences in genetic disorders is that some disorders are caused by abnormalities in genes on the X-chromosome. Notable examples are haemophilia and the commonest forms of muscular dystrophy. Most though not all genetic disorders are recessive (i.e. you need to have inherited the wrong gene from both parents, not just one, for the disorder to show up). Females have two X-chromosomes, so if they have an abnormal gene, e.g. for haemophilia, on one X-chromosome, its effect will probably be suppressed by a normal gene on the other X-chromosome. Males have only one X-chromosome, combined with a Y-chromosome which has far fewer genes, so if they have an abnormal gene on their single X-chromosome, then they will develop the disorder.

[Zalatix]

15. Which basically means if you want a better chance at a healthy child.........

[KurtNYC]

6. Sounds like certain scientists really need to get laid.

Mitochondrial DNA move better when there is some Barry White playing.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. Story is from 2001

http://www.disinfo.com/2010/03/genetically-engineered-human-have-already-been-born/

more from the link
The big problem is that no one knows what effects this will have on the children or their progeny.
In fact, this substitution of mitochondria hasn’t been studied extensively on animals, never mind
Homo sapiens. The doctors reported that the kids are healthy, but they neglected to mention something crucial. Although the fertility clinic’s technique resulted in fifteen babies, a total of seventeen fetuses had been created.

One of them had been aborted, and the other miscarried.

Why? Both of them had a rare genetic disorder, Turner syndrome, which only strikes females.
Ordinarily, just one in 2,500 females is born with this condition, in which one of the X chromosomes is incomplete or totally missing. Yet two out of these seventeen fetuses had developed it.

If we assume that nine of the fetuses were female (around 50 percent), then two of the nine
female fetuses had this rare condition. Internal documents from the fertility clinic admit that this
amazingly high rate might be due to the ooplasmic transfer.

[scissors87]

9. Daily Mail Beat-up

People, the scientific article quoted in the Daily Mail story is from 2001:
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/513.full.pdf+html

Another beat-up, as usual.

[LeftishBrit]

10. First of all; this was the Daily Mail, which is a very right-wing sensationalist unreliable rag

Imagine a British cross between the National Enquirer and Glenn Beck's/ Rush Limbaugh's talk-show.

Secondly, on checking this, the article is dated 5.5.01! In other words, published over a decade ago!

I tried to check why it's suddenly come up, and I found that it is presented as 'news', without the date, on both Infowars and WorldNutDaily. I don't know which came first, or what other extreme right sites may have this as 'news'; I needed to wash my hands and my eyes thoroughly just from doing this particular piece of research.

Has the recent Supreme Court decision so unhinged the anti-healthcare-Right that they will spread any piece of anti-medical propaganda that they can, however old, misleading or plain irrelevant?

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Thanks for that

I couldn't see a date on the page, and had thought "hadn't they done this before?", but thought it might have been a couple of years ago, not 11! I couldn't see the article on the Human Reproduction website, but sometimes it's from an upcoming issue.

Thanks also for the info about what the genes affect - it sounds like there can be problems because of them, but nothing really in the 'normal working variation' of humans.

Also, looking at recent news on the subject, it may have even been thrown in by the Christian right in the UK - because there's an HFEA public consultation on this subject this year, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics wrote a report in favour, a couple of weeks ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18393682

The earliest use of the article this month I can find is this ('Prison Planet' is part of 'Infowars'; it looks like a user forum): http://prinsonplanetinf.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981430088 , though the user does seem American, which may shoot down my theory.