Affinity News: June-October 2025

This article was first published in our recent Social Issues Bulletin – Issue 60, which is available to download here.

UK three-parent-baby experiment published 

In July 2025, it was announced that eight children were born in the UK from a procedure seeking to ensure that they are unaffected by a serious genetic disorder. News of the births and the children’s health had been expected for a long time. The fertility regulator granted the first licence in 2017 to a clinic at Newcastle University where scientists pioneered the technique. The four boys and four girls, including one set of identical twins, were born to seven women.

Every cell in a human body contains (1) a nucleus, the core of the cell wherein the chromosomes (which contain most of the DNA) of an individual are located, and (2) mitochondria, which are very small bodies (containing 37 genes) which act as energy sources within the cell. Mitochondrial disorders arise when genetic mutations in the mitochondria or in the chromosomes limit the energy supply in cells of affected persons giving rise to dysfunctions in some organs and tissue with high energy requirements such as in the brain or muscles. 

In this experiment, the chromosomes were transferred from the fertilised egg of one woman (who wants a child but has defective mitochondria) into another fertilised egg which has been emptied of its own chromosomes and originates from a donor woman with healthy mitochondria. The new fertilised egg was then implanted into the woman wanting a child. The procedure could eventually enable women, affected by mitochondrial disorders, to have healthy genetically related children. This process, however, is not a medical treatment. It only makes sure certain kinds of persons are created in the first place. In other words, it is a form of genetic selection of possible future children.

30 year-old frozen human embryo eventually becomes a baby

A baby boy born in July 2025 set a new record for having been stored the longest (30 and a half years) as a frozen embryo. Linda Archerd, 62, who created the embryo in 1994 had originally planned to use the embryos herself but then experienced a divorce with her husband. She won custody of the embryos and kept them in storage, believing that she may use them one day. However, this did not happen. 

She was then informed about the possibility of giving the embryos up for ‘adoption’. This is enabled by (often Christian) agencies which believe that embryos have full moral status. In this case, Lindsey and Tim Pierce, who live in the USA, adopted the embryos. In the UK, about 200 leftover embryos from IVF are also adopted every year out of the about 20,000/year who are discarded and left to perish. 

New egg created from skin cell chromosomes

American researchers successfully created early-stage human embryos for the first time by using the chromosomes from skin cells and combining them with human eggs. This breakthrough could potentially address infertility caused by aging or illness, as it enables nearly any cell of the body to serve as the source of new life. The approach may also pave the way for same-sex couples to have genetically related children. However, the technique is still very preliminary and may need years of development before it can be considered for use in fertility treatments.

The procedure involves extracting the nucleus – containing all the chromosomes – from a skin cell and inserting it into an unfertilised egg that has had its own chromosome removed. This process is similar to the cloning procedure that resulted in Dolly the Sheep. But the resulting egg still holds a full set of 46 chromosomes, making it unsuitable for fertilization. Therefore, the scientists developed a method to discard half of the new egg’s chromosomes resulting in the usual number of 23 chromosomes. This was then fertilised by a sperm cell (also containing 23 chromosomes) which, all going well, resulted in an embryo inheriting 23 chromosomes from each parent.

The study indicated that 82 functional eggs were created. These were then fertilised by sperm with some embryos progressing until the early stages of development. However, none of the embryos were left to develop beyond the six-day-stage before being discarded.

New treatment for Huntington’s disease

For the first time, it was indicated that Huntington’s disease (originating from a mutated gene), which is a fatal genetic disease which destroys brain cells in adult patients, has been treated with some success. 

Typically, symptoms begin in a person’s 30s or 40s, and the condition is usually fatal within 20 years. If one parent carries the faulty gene, his or her child has a 50% chance of inheriting the condition and eventually developing the disease.

Data from the new experimental treatment indicated that progress of the disease had decreased by 75% in patients. This means that the decline that would have been expected in one year would now take four years after treatment. The new form of gene therapy, administered through brain surgery lasting 12 to 18 hours, offers new hope for treating the disease. Early intervention could potentially stop symptoms from developing altogether, which would result in less foetuses being terminated when prenatal testing reveals they have the mutated gene. Fewer embryos may also be discarded with the mutated gene in a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis. This is where many IVF embryos are created by the parents before one or two are selected without the mutation and implanted into the mother (with most of the affected embryos being discarded). With the new treatment, even if they have the mutant gene, embryos and foetuses have a much higher potential for healthy lives.