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A comment on UK to allow babies from three people. Parent comment

Re:UK to allow babies from three people by maxerickson on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @08:54PM (#8994888)
(I wasn't) correct in saying that the implantation of modified embryos was banned in 2008:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/section/3

Here's the relevant original text:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/37/section/3/enacte...

edited for error.

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Re:UK to allow babies from three people by geographomics on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @09:10PM (#8994932)
Perhaps I'm reading this incorrectly, but as far I can see it was implicitly banned in the 1990 Act by section 3(3d). And then section 3ZA(5) as introduced in 2008 enabled the development of oocyte or embryo-modifying technologies to prevent mitochondrial disease.
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Re:UK to allow babies from three people by maxerickson on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @09:14PM (#8994940)
I think you're right, sorry for the noise.
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Re:UK to allow babies from three people by geographomics on Tuesday February 03, 2015 @09:39PM (#8995010)
No I think we're both correct - sorry, I didn't explain myself properly! I agree with you that it was definitely still banned for implantation.

But by having that clause about mitochondrial disease in, it enabled researchers to investigate (and the the HFE Authority to permit research on) human mitochondrial transfer techniques in vitro by explicitly pointing out the possibility of a future redefinition.

EDIT: this explains it much better than I'm trying to - http://www.hfea.gov.uk/mitochondrial-disease-new-research.ht...

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