Thread by @sarahdingle_

The Aus Senate this Weds will vote on so-called 'three-parent #babies'. These would be #donorconceived babies, genetically the child of 3 people not 2, made by an unregulated, for-profit industry, where there are serious questions about the future for the resulting child. A 🧵

Three-parent babies are made from #mitochondrialDNA donation. For eg: you fertilise a would-be mother's egg, and a donor egg. You suck the middle (the pronucleus) out of both. You put the would-be mother's pronucleus in the 'shell' of the donor egg. You gestate the embryo.

This is to avoid a child inheriting mitochondrial disease from the mother. What it means is: the child inherits DNA from 3 people - bio father, the would-be mother, and the donor. This *is inheritable*. If it's a girl baby, DNA from THREE people will be passed on to her children.

The Aus #fertility industry is federally unregulated. There are no national laws. Half the states and territories have no fertility laws either. It's an extremely profitable sector, concentrated in the hands of 3 players. 2 are ASX listed. The 3rd is owned by a HK consortium.

#mitochondrialDNA donation is a human experiment. The youngest child born of mito donation is, at most, 6. It's unclear how many kids have been born of this but it appears to be a number you could count on the fingers of one hand.

I’m not a scientist, but it seems to me that if you want to determine whether this technique is safe, you need to study the resulting babies born, for years, as they grow and mature. You also need an actual cohort of such babies. #fertility #donorconception #mitochondria #ethics

AFAIK there appear to be only THREE publicly documented instances of children born of #mitochondrial DNA donation in the world. 1 in Mexico. 1 in Ukraine. 1 a Spanish/Greek collab. *In only ONE of the 3 cases was this technique actually used to prevent mitochondrial disease.*

That single case was the baby born in Mexico. The health of the resulting child, a boy, appears to be unknown. His parents, having gotten what they wanted, declined long-term monitoring. nature.com/articles/natur… #mitochondrialDNA

#MaevesLaw is about using a highly experimental
technique to create babies not yet born. It will not improve the health of any existing Australians currently living with mitochondrial disease. It will allow the creation of a whole new 'class' of #donorconceived people. #ivf

...and here we come to a deeply troubling fact: the entire process of constructing #MaevesLaw has happened in the *absence* of any consultation with any Australian #donorconceived people - and in the absence of any national laws on their rights in #donorconception @DC_Aust

That is, the Parliament looks to be opening the way to create *more*, *highly experimental* #donorconceived people without fixing anything at all for the perhaps 100k (or more) donor conceived people who already exist. #humanrights #childrensrights

A key organisation in pushing *for* #Maeveslaw is the Mito Foundation. Its patron is the Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison. #auspol #senate #mitochondrialDNA #donorconception

Debates on various aspects of #donorconception - if any are held at all - tend to be almost entirely parent-centric. They reflect the desires of would-be parents. They discuss, in depth, the hardships of those would-be parents. Parents, of course, vote: children do not.

These debates almost never centre the rights and
welfare of the resulting child - as Australia is required to do, as per the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And which we do in all other areas of society and law - except when it comes to the #fertility industry. #uncrc