Autoplay Next video from Max length

Medical Edge: Experts support new 3-parent IVF technique

260 views · Published 5 February 2015 · 3:40 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: LOCAL 12 · 2015 · News & Politics

CINCINNATI (Liz Bonis) -- More today on what's called 3-parent IVF.

Britain has voted to become the first country to allow this procedure, which experts say could help more parents have healthy children,

When we first met up with Amy and Nick Dion a few months ago they were grateful to a medical team led by Dr. Glen Hofmann.

He is a reproductive endocrinologist who specializes in fertility. He helped them have their little baby Abigail.

We had a tough time having Abby, said Amy Dion. That's for sure.

Abigail was born after the Dions had traditional invitro fertilization or IVF.

It's a process by which eggs and sperm are mixed in a lab for fertilization, and implanted in the mothers body. A perfect pairing of mom and dad.

The Dions know that without research into IVF healthy babies such as little Abigail might not be born.

Its nice to see that people are investing time and money into helping us have our dream, said Amy.

3-parent IVF takes the traditional IVF one step further.

Babies born with 3-parent IVF have genetically modified embryos with DNA from a mother, father and female donor.

Since that story however, you may have noticed there's been sort of a new conversation across the country about 3-parent IVF, so we thought we'd revisit some of our providers.

To share a few more details about what we need to know that may be raising questions about this procedure.

3-parent IVF allows for the replacement of a damaged mitochondria in the cell, which could stop diseases such as blindness or muscular dystrophy from being passed along.

The results show that you can eliminate those abnormal mitochondrial genes from the gene pool and let these people have healthy babies, said Reproductive Endocrinologist Dr. Glen Hofmann.

One of the concerns you hear about with a procedure like this however, is something they refer to as designer babies and are we moving one step closer to choosing how a baby might look.

I can't fathom how were going to be able to use this technology to decide I want my daughter to have blue eyes and blond hair and be very Aryan and things like this, said Dr. Hofmann. I don't know how this could lead to anything like that.

He says just like traditional IVF babies raised huge concerns years ago.

If people weren't willing to push the envelope a little we'd be back in a world where a lot of people couldn't have healthy families, said Dr. Hofmann.

Hoffman points out we already have techniques to make designer babies, so this should not deter an option for some people to have hope for healthy children.

This would likely be more than traditional IVF in cost, which is already up to $10,000.

Follow Liz Bonis on Twitter @lbonis1, and LIKE her on Facebook.

Medical Edge: Experts support new 3-parent IVF technique

More from this channel