The United Kingdom may approve a controversial technique of using DNA from three people to create a baby, the country’s top medical officer said. The new technique allows scientists to take DNA from another person if a mother wants to avoid passing on certain genetic diseases, like a faulty mitochondria, and embed it in a healthy donor embryo that is then transferred to the mother’s womb. British tabloids have latched onto the development as creating a “three-parent baby,” but scientists say the donor DNA is too negligible to be relevant. Similar research is going on in the U.S., though embryos are not used to produce children.
