A few days ago the FDA participated in a summit that was held to consider radical biological procedures that would produce genetically modified human beings. Marcy Darnovsky. executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, wrote this article for the New York Times. Darnovsky believes these modification techniques are dangerous because of their medical risks and societal implications:
These techniques would change every cell in the bodies of children born as a result of their use, and these alterations would be passed down to future generations.
The F.D.A. calls them mitochondrial manipulation technologies. The procedures involve removing the nuclear material either from the egg or embryo of a woman with inheritable mitochondrial disease and inserting it into a healthy egg or embryo of a donor whose own nuclear material has been discarded. Any offspring would carry genetic material from three people – the nuclear DNA of the mother and father, and the mitochondrial DNA of the donor.