U.K. moves toward making babies from DNA of 3 people

LONDON - Britain moved Tuesday toward allowing scientists to create humans from the DNA of three people.

The technology aims to liberate future generations from inherited diseases. Critics say it crosses a scientific boundary and could lead to "designer babies."

The House of Commons voted 382-178 in favor of legislation to license these experiments. If approved in the House of Lords, Britain would become the world's first nation to allow genetic modifications in human embryos.

"This is a bold step to take, but it is a considered and informed step," Health Minister Jane Ellison told the Commons.

The technology is completely different from that used to create genetically modified foods, where scientists typically select individual genes to be transferred from one species into another. But critics say it crosses a red line, since changes made to embryos will be passed on to future generations, with the potential for unforeseen consequences.

While this legislation was drafted specifically to grant permission only for certain specified techniques, critics fear it will encourage scientists to push for other experiments in the future.

The protests are "about protecting children from the severe health risks of these unnecessary techniques and protecting everyone from the eugenic designer-baby future that will follow from this," said David King, director of the secular watchdog group Human Genetics Alert.

The technology alters a human egg or embryo before transferring it into a mother with defects in her mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. These genetic defects can result in diseases including muscular dystrophy; heart, kidney, and liver failure; and severe muscle weakness.

Scientists would remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of the prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the nucleus DNA has been removed. The resulting embryo would have the nucleus DNA from its parents but the mitochondrial DNA from the donor. This can be done two ways - before or after fertilization - in the ways approved by the Commons.

Scientists say more than 99 percent of the DNA in the resulting child would come from its parents, with a tiny fraction coming from the donor egg.

Britain's chief medical officer, Sally Davies, said the law would give women with mitochondrial disease "the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders."

Britain has long been a leader in reproductive technology; the world's first baby from in vitro fertilization, Louise Brown, was born in the U.K. in 1978.

U.S. regulators are moving more slowly: Scientists at a Food and Drug Administration meeting last year said it may take decades to determine if the methods are safe. Meanwhile, experts say the techniques are likely being used elsewhere, such as in China and Japan, but are mostly unregulated.