Opinion: Three-Parent Embryos—A Slippery Slope?

The use of pronuclear transfer to treat infertility must first be backed by evidence it can work in cases where parents seek to avoid mitochondrial mutations.

Written byJohn D. Loike and Alan Kadish

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ISTOCK, VCHALJohn D. Loike, a Professor of Biology at Touro College and University Systems, writes a regular column on bioethics for The Scientist.

On June 7, news reports emerged that Valery Zukin, director of Nadiya Clinic of Reproductive Medicine in Ukraine, and his colleagues had created four children from “infertile” older women using DNA obtained from three different parents. The technique, called pronuclear transfer, has entered clinical trials in the U.K. to help fertile women with devastating mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations to have healthy babies, but not to treat infertility. It’s our position that it is premature to apply pronuclear transfer to treat infertile women for both scientific and ethical reasons until more clinical research has been performed on women with mtDNA mutations.

In pronuclear transfer, a man’s sperm is used to generate two fertilized eggs: one obtained from his female partner who has the mtDNA mutations and ...

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Meet the Author

John D. Loike
John Loike serves as the interim director of bioethics at New York Medical College and as a professor of biology at Touro University. He served previously as the codirector for graduate studies in the Department of Physiology Cellular Biophysics and director of Special Programs in the Center for Bioethics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His biomedical research focuses on how human white blood cells combat infections and cancer. Loike lectures internationally on emerging topics in bioethics, organizes international conferences, and has published more than 150 papers and abstracts in the areas of immunology, cancer, and bioethics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
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Alan Kadish
Alan Kadish is president of the Touro University System, the largest Jewish-sponsored educational institution in the United States. Before becoming Touro’s second president in March 2010, Kadish distinguished himself as a cardiologist, teacher, researcher, and administrator. A graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, he received postdoctoral training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a fellow in cardiology. He is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and cardiac electrophysiology.
Prior to joining Touro in 2009 as senior provost and chief operating officer, Kadish taught at the University of Michigan and held a 19-year tenure at Northwestern University. He served Northwestern as the Chester and Deborah Cooley Professor of Medicine, the senior associate chief of the cardiology division, and director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Trials unit, and sat on the finance and investment committees of the Northwestern clinical practice plan. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers; received numerous grants, including from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation; and contributed to several textbooks.
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