BY KATE AND KELLAND
LONDON Tue Feb 3, 2015 8:55am EST
Feb 3 (Reuters) – Britain on Tuesday could become the first country to allow a “three-parent” IVF technique which doctors say will prevent some inherited incurable diseases but which critics see as a step towards creating designer babies.
The treatment is known as “three-parent” in vitro fertilisation (IVF) because the babies, born from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA from a mother, a father and from a female donor.
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“At the moment there is a very clear boundary that babies cannot be genetically altered, and once you’ve decided that they can, even for a small number of genes, you have done something very profound,” he told BBC radio.
David King, director of a pro-choice campaign group, Human Genetics Alert, urged others to follow Rees-Mogg’s example to protect “everyone from the eugenic designer baby future that will follow from this.”
(Additional reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
