Mitochondrial donation

In early February 2015, MPs voted to amend the 2008 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to permit mitochondrial donation (Gallagher, 2015). On 24 February, the House of Lords approved the amendment, and it will be enshrined in law in October 2015. This makes Britain the first country to address the problem of mitochondrial disease by allowing the creation of babies by IVF using biological material from three different people.

The decision has prompted controversy. Before considering the ethical aspects of mitochondrial donation, it is perhaps worth asking what are mitochondria, what is mitochondrial disease and what does the mitochondrial donation technique involve?

The mitochondria are organelles that generate most of the cell's energy. Numbers of mitochondria per cell vary from zero to hundreds or thousands. Mitochondria hold around 0.1% of a cell's DNA, and this mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) comprises 37 genes (Amato, 2014). Unlike the genome in the cell nucleus, which includes maternal and paternal DNA, all of a person's mitochondria stem from the mother's egg (Calloway, 2014).