MEP’s have claimed the UK has infringed EU law by allowing three parents babies to be created. Britain has become the first country to allow the procedure, but critics say the country has “violated human dignity,” and could affect the human race.
The decision has caused uproar amongst European politicians, with
a group of Italian MPs writing to the House of Lords to
reconsider green lighting the controversial technique. They have
also invited the European Commission to step in and look into the
case.
In a letter to the Times newspaper, the Italian MP’s said the
legislation, “could have uncontrollable and unforeseeable
consequences, affecting future generations and modifying genetic
heritage in an irreversible way, inevitably affecting the human
species as a whole.”
READ MORE: MPs approve draft ‘3 parent baby’ law
The contentious new law, passed by a majority of UK MPs, would
allow DNA transfers. They voted 382 to 128 in favor of an
amendment to the 2008 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act.
This would allow a ‘second’ mother to provide healthy genetic
material to be used to replace defects in an egg. Some people
aren’t happy because a baby would be born with to one father and
two mothers.
Dozens of MEPs have also written to British Prime Minister David
Cameron asking him to overturn the legislation. They are worried
there hasn’t been sufficient testing. If babies are born, it
would be impossible to isolate them in the UK, meaning if there
was a problem, it could in theory affect the whole world.
The result of deranged leftist ideology gone amok. http://t.co/NbOMMxNGVF
— Eden Maxwell (@soulartist28) February
22, 2015
Slovakian MEP Miroslav Mikolask and 49 other MEPs said: “We
are writing to you to express our profound concern at the
intention of the UK to permit the modification of the human
genome.”
“Your proposals violate the fundamental standards of human
dignity and integrity of the person. Modification of the genome
is unethical and cannot be permitted. These proposals put the UK
out in front of a race to the bottom so far as standards of human
dignity are concerned,” he said, as cited by the Daily
Telegraph.
The UK’s Department of Health says they are confident that
Britain has not broken EU law by implementing the new
legislation,
“We have carefully considered recent arguments relating to
the Clinical Trials Directive and are confident that as it
relates to clinical trials of medicines, it is not relevant in
this context.”
Lots of reasons why #HofL should
vote for mitochondrial donation http://t.co/SauSvCiT5V #mitoaware@WellcomeTrust@4lilyfoundation
— BioNews (@BioNewsUK) February
20, 2015
Despite the opposition from politicians around Europe, the move
to allow the controversial technique does have its supporters.
Nancy Lee, the senior policy adviser at Wellcome Trust, a
bio-medical research charity based in London, said: “It is
not true that the global scientific community is opposed to
mitochondrial donation.
“In fact, 40 of the world’s leading scientists and ethicists
in the field, from 14 countries, regularly urged the UK to back
regulations allowing the technique and a different expert group
including five Nobel laureates have written to the Times to
express their support.
“While it is never possible to be 100 percent certain that
any new medical procedure is safe when first used in humans,
three expert scientific reviews have found no safety reasons not
to proceed,” Lee said, as reported by the Daily Express.
Around 2,500 women in the UK could potentially benefit from the
new legislation and some 125 babies could be born each year.