An Ottawa doctor is calling for Canada to consider legalizing a so-called “three-parent” fertility treatment that could save babies from fatal illnesses.
The controversial treatment has already been legalized in the U.K., and Dr. Arthur Leader is urging the federal government to start a conversation about it in Canada.
The treatment involves replacing problematic mitochondrial cells in a fertilized egg with healthy cells from another woman’s egg, thereby preventing mitochondrial disorders that can prove fatal. Leader says the treatment would only be applicable in rare cases, as mitochondrial disorders are uncommon. Mitochondrial disease can manifest as a range of issues, from diabetes and poor vision to muscular wasting and premature aging. In severe cases, children can die from mitochondrial issues within their first two years.
“It’s a very specific disorder that requires a very specific treatment,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday, adding that only about 200-300 children are affected by it per year. Dr. Leader, of the Ottawa Fertility Centre, says the challenge right now is that the topic can’t even be researched in Canada.
“The whole process is criminal so that you can’t even contemplate doing this,” he said.
Leader acknowledges there are fears around the idea of a “three-parent” baby, but he says that label doesn’t accurately reflect the nature of the process.
“There’s two parents with about 0.1 per cent of the DNA being added from a third person,” he said. “Sometimes, using the three-parent analogy gets people a little bit frightened.”
The first three-parent baby was born in Mexico in 2016. The U.K. legalized the process that same year, but it remains controversial, particularly among religious groups.
The process is not approved in the U.S., and Congress has barred the FDA from examining experiment proposals involving three-parent babies.
Dr. Leader says the U.K. offers a framework for how to roll out the treatment, should Canada decide to do so. But first it must move beyond the decades-old ruling that banned three-parent babies in the first place, he says.
“We didn’t have the science to know what to do and how to do it properly (25 years ago),” Dr. Leader said. “We’re now 25 years on. Science has evolved but the federal law states that doing a mitochondrial transfer is illegal and in fact criminal.”
Some have raised fears that tinkering with a human embryo might lead to “designer” babies, but Dr. Leader says that is not necessarily the case.
“You can control very specifically what is done,” he said. “So women and their partners could have a child that will be in all other ways normal.”
Dr. Leader recently co-authored a commentary calling for the federal government to review its stance on the procedure.
“We need to start a dialogue,” he said.
With files from The Associated Press
