The experimental technique, if approved for use, would allow a woman to give birth to a baby who inherits her normal nucleus DNA but not her defective mitochondrial DNA.
Federal health regulators will consider this week whether to green light a provocative new fertilization technique that could eventually create babies from the DNA of three people, with the goal of preventing mothers from passing on debilitating genetic diseases to their children.
The Food and Drug Administration has framed its two-day meeting as a "scientific, technologic and clinical" discussion about how to test the approach in humans. But the technique itself raises a number of ethical questions, including whether the government should sanction the creation of genetically modified humans.
The FDA panel will hear from several prominent critics who oppose any human testing of the approach, arguing that it could be a slippery slope toward "designer babies," - in which parents customize traits like eye color, height and intelligence.
But the field's leading U.S. researcher will be on hand to explain and defend his work, which he describes as "gene correction," rather than "gene modification."
"We want to replace these mutated genes, which by nature have become pathogenic to humans," says Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who will present on Tuesday. "We're reversing them back to normal, so I don't understand why you would be opposing that."
