Ten years after the UK became the first country to legalise mitochondrial donation, the first results from the use of these high-profile reproductive technologies — designed to prevent passing on genetic disorders — have finally been published.
So far, eight children have been born, all reportedly healthy, thanks to the long-term efforts of scientists and doctors in Newcastle, England. Should this be a cause for excitement, disappointment or concern? Perhaps, I would suggest, it could be a bit of all three.
The New England Journal of Medicine has published on a groundbreaking fertility treatment that could prevent devastating inherited diseases. The technique, called mitochondrial donation, was used to help 22 women who carry faulty genes that would otherwise pass serious genetic disorders — such as — to their children. These disorders affect the body’s ability to produce energy at the cellular level and can cause severe disability or death in babies.
The technique, developed by the Newcastle team, involves creating an embryo using DNA from three people: nuclear DNA from the intended mother and father, and healthy mitochondrial DNA from a donor egg. During the parliamentary debates leading up to The Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations in 2015, there were concerns about the effectiveness of the procedure and its potential side-effects.
The announcement that this technology has led to the birth of eight apparently healthy children therefore marks a major scientific achievement for the UK, which has been widely praised by and . However, these results should not detract from some important questions they also raise.
First, why has it taken so long for any updates on the application of this technology, including its outcomes and its limitations, to be made public? Especially given the significant public financial investment made into its development.
In a country positioning itself as a leader in the , transparency should be a central principle. Transparency not only supports the progress of other research teams but also keeps the public and patients well informed.
Second, what is the significance of these results? While eight babies were born using this technology, this figure contrasts starkly with the predicted number of 150 babies per year likely to be born using the technique.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the UK regulator in this area, has approved 32 applications since 2017 when the Newcastle team obtained its licence, but the technique was used with only 22 of them, resulting in eight babies. Does this constitute sufficiently robust data to prove the effectiveness of the technology and was it worth the considerable efforts and investments over almost two decades of campaigning, debate and research?
As I wrote when this law was passed, officials should have been more realistic about how many people this treatment could actually help. By overestimating the number of patients who might benefit, they risked giving false hope to families who wouldn’t be eligible for the procedure.