Friday, November 21, 2014

The Girl With 3 Biological Parents



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Alana Saarinen is your typical teenage girl who does typical teenage things but she has DNA from three different people. Alana's mother had been trying to have a child for a number of years without success, turns out she had a mitochondrial disorder that prevents her from passing mitochondria to her children. Alana's parents used a method called cytoplasmic transfer and used mitochondria from another woman (since mitochondria can only be inherited from the mother) to substitute the ones Alana's mother could not provide. since mitochondria contain some DNA Alana has genetic material from three different people. There are a few concerns about the procedure but nothing particularly alarming (1 out of the 12 fetuses miscarried but that is an expected number) two of the children developed genetic disorders but it's unclear as to whether they were do to chance or the procedure itself.

Other articles have claimed these people to be "genetically modified humans" and that the scientists are "playing god" but this is unfair for people like Alana and her family. Two people are now the parents of a healthy girl living a pleasant, normal life and that is a wonderful thing. Alana's parents are certainly not the only people who suffer from not being able to have children and desperately want biological children of their own and as this procedure is perfected and becomes more widely used, more and more of those people will have the chance to get the family that they so dearly want. I personally do not see anything wrong with the use of this procedure and think that it will bring much happiness to those who need it.

1 comment:

  1. Learning how important mitochondrial DNA is for humans in almost any biology class makes me wonder how Alana's mother herself received this phenotype of not being able to pass on her mitochondrial DNA to her children since obviously if her mother had the phenotype Alana's mother would have had trouble being born also. It also causes me to wonder how many others there are out there with this same issue. In terms of what was done in order for Alana to be born i believe its wonderful and this is why the advances is the science community are so exciting.

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