The baby boy was conceived 5 months ago using an egg containing nuclear DNA from his mother and father, and mitochondrial DNA from a second woman. The idea, doctors say was to prevent the child from inheriting a fatal genetic disease called Leigh Syndrome from his mother, who had previously lost two children to the illness.
The baby was born to Jordanian parents, and they were treated in Mexico by a team of doctors led by Dr. John Zhang of the New Hope Fertility Center in New York. The technique is not approved in the US, but Zhang said, “To save lives is the ethical thing to do.”
