The Catholic Weekly 8 August 2021

catholicweekly.com.au 3 8, August, 2021 COUPLES WHO risk passing on a serious genetic disorder to their child understandably would want to avoid that out- come, but legalising human cloning and 3-parent IVF pos- es more than harm than good, say researchers, ethicists and faith leaders. There are treatments but no cure for the range of mi- tochondrial disorders which are inherited primarily from a person’s mother. They potentially affect be- tween 90,000-120,000 Aus- tralians but it’s been estimat- ed that 90 percent of people with a mitochondrial muta- tion who develop a disorder are never diagnosed because symptoms are diverse and can range frommild to severe. Mitochondria are tiny DNA-containing structures found in human cells that produce roughly 90 per cent of the energy the body needs to function. Sufferers can experience low energy, muscle weakness, epileptic fits, strokes, diabe- tes, blindness or migraines, and early death. IVF-assisted technology ex- ists that would allow a woman with the disorder to have eggs stripped of her mitochon- drial DNA and replaced with healthy mitochondrial DNA donated by another woman, in the hope of not passing on the condition to her biological child. The procedure has been legal in the UK since 2015 and while no child has yet been born as a result, there is a push to overturn the Aus- tralian Government’s ban on mitochondrial donation un- der the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction Act 2002(Cth) and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 (Cth). A Bill introduced in March proposes changes to ensure that it is no longer an offence to create, for the purposes of reproduction, a human em- bryo that contains the genet- ic material of more than two people and contains heritable changes to the genome (the complete set of genetic in- structions stored in a person’s chromosomes). The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is urging that the Bill be scrapped or at least paused, citing safety and ethical concerns and a lack of evidence that the proposed technique is effective. In a submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee inquiry into the Bill they argued that current- ly legal forms of IVF, which the bishops do not support, ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues ‘Designer children is not the way to do this’ It’s a technical issue, but current proposed legislation that would allow radical genetic alteration of embryonic human beings is seriously unethical and has potential long-term generational effects, say Australia’s bishops What all parents dream of - but the technology proposed to bypass what can be serious health conditions that may afflict children has serious ethical and safety issues, including inheritable changes to the individual’s genome, Australia’s Catholic bishops have warned. would at least be a more reli- able way of reducing the risk of children being born with faulty mitochondria. “Mitochondrial donation… adds issues of safety and eth- ics with no benefit to health,” said Bishop Richard Umbers, the Bishop Delegate for Life. “These techniques increase the risk of the child carrying the disease for the sake of hav- ing a genetic relationship with the mother.” Furthermore, the bishop said that mitochondrial do- nation will not cure children who are already ill with the disease. “Our hearts go out to fam- ilies dealing with these con- ditions and who have the un- derstandable desire that their children should not also be born with these burdens,” the submission said. “It is a natural human long- ing to spare children illness and suffering….[but] There are a number of difficulties with mitochondrial donation that mean it may not offer much to families and would pose significant ethical chal- lenges.” Bishop Umbers said the draft legislation would open the door to three ethically contentious practices. It would allow researchers to change the human genome, meaning any changes are her- itable over generations. It would allow human em- bryos to be created and de- stroyed purely for research and training, and to be creat- ed from the genetic material of three people. Geneticists are among those raising concerns, such as Fyodor Urnov, who studies genome editing at the Univer- sity of California, Berkeley. Professor Urnov told me- dia that three large studies into heritable genome editing published last year “are the equivalent of having the rock- et explode at the launch pad before take-off”. Published in June 2020 these involved experiments to modify human embryos and revealed how the process can make large, unwanted chang- es to the genome. Last month the World Health Organisation (WHO) released two reports by an 18-member advisory com- mittee which cited “great con- cerns” raised by gene editing technology and on its govern- ance. Australian bioethicist Mar- garet Somerville wrote this month that while some pro- ponents of mitochondrial DNA liken it to organ dona- tion, which is widely accept- ed as ethical, the two are very different. “One ethical argument against mtDNA donation is that it means creating ‘three-parent human beings’, which [this argument propos- es] is inherently unethical,” she wrote. “Another ethical argument is that it is harmful to the person born with donated mtDNA, including psycholog- ically, because it causes them ‘genetic bewilderment’, espe- cially when they do not know who the anonymous mtDNA donor was. “It is clear from studies of people born from anonymous sperm or ova donation and of adopted children that most people want to know where they came from biologically and to whom they are biologi- cally related. Professor Somerville said that organ donation does not go to “the intrinsic essence of the person”, adding that it is “important to recognise that our genetic endowment can play fundamental roles in es- tablishing some of our traits and even our sense of ‘who we are’”. This is important even though the amount of do- nated DNA would be small, relative to the DNA of the pri- mary couple, the type of DNA donated affects not only every cell in a person’s body but also the development of the em- bryo and placenta. Bishop Umbers said the di- agnosis of a disease in a child is a cause of “real suffering”, “but we need to live according to God’s plan in the passing on of the gift of life,” he said. “Much was promised 20 years ago about the potential of embryonic stem cells that never materialised. “What we can foresee, how- ever, is further experimen- tation with human embryos and the discarding of nascent human life in the industry of in vitro fertilisation.” Mitochondri- al donation, which geneti- cally modifies a human embryo or egg, adds issues of safety and ethics with no benefit to health.” Bishop Richard Umbers, Bishop Delegate for Life. At the heart of the issue is technology that would strip a woman’s eggs of her mito- chondrial DNA, to be replaced by mitochondrial DNA from another woman. Changes are inheritable. NEWS