Category Archives: Transhuman News

LONDON (KABC) -- A controversial technique to create embryos using DNA from three people may soon be allowed in Britain.

The technique was created to help women prevent birth defects from being passed on to their babies. It's intended to bypass faulty mitochondria, the energy source in cells. Muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and mental retardation can result from faulty mitochondria from a mother.

Approximately one in 200 children born in Britain each year has a mitochondrial disorder.

For a woman with faulty mitochondria, scientists take only the healthy genetic material from her egg or embryo. They then transfer that into a donor egg or embryo that still has its healthy mitochondria but has had the rest of its key DNA removed. The fertilized embryo is then transferred into the womb of the mother.

"Scientists have developed ground-breaking new procedures which could stop these diseases being passed on," Britain's chief medical officer, Dr. Sally Davies, said in a statement on Friday. "It's only right that we look to introduce this life-saving treatment as soon as we can."

Similar research is going on in the U.S., where the embryos are not being used to produce children.

British law forbids altering a human egg or an embryo before transferring it into a woman, so such treatments are currently only allowed for research. The government says it plans to publish draft guidelines later this year before introducing a final version to be debated in the U.K. Parliament next year. Politicians would need to approve the use of the new techniques before patients could be treated.

Some groups oppose artificial reproduction techniques and believe the destruction of eggs or embryos to be immoral. British tabloids jumped on the procedure when it was first announced in 2008 and labeled it the creation of a three-parent baby - the mother, the donor and the father - a charge scientists claim is inaccurate because the amount of DNA from the donor egg is insignificant.

If British lawmakers agree, the U.K. would become the first country in the world where the technique could be used to create babies. Experts say the procedures would likely only be used in about a dozen women every year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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DNA from 3 people to create embryos in United Kingdom?

The long awaited DNA tests in the Shaun Ritterson case are finally in, and the results have shed little light on the 35-year-old murder mystery.

Unfortunately, due to the degradation of the evidence, the test results came back inconclusive, said Matt Weintraub, Bucks County's chief of prosecution. They couldn't implicate our suspect, or rule our suspect out.

Like all homicides, the 20-year-old Bristol woman's case will remain open, Weintraub said, but will no longer be an active investigation.

Personally, I'm disappointed, he said. But professionally I'm satisfied that we've done all that we can do to solve this case and bring some finality to it.

Ritterson was found dead on a Buckingham hillside in June 1977. She had been stabbed and disemboweled.

Numerous people were questioned, but an arrest was never made.

In 2011, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office granted reporters from Calkins MediaThe Courier Times and Intelligencer's parent company unprecedented access to the Ritterson files and evidence. A year of research and interviews led to the award-winning series The Girl on Church Hill, published in June 2012.

The reporters' work also spurred investigators to reopen the case. A task force of detectives and other law enforcement officials re-interviewed as many witnesses as they could find, and chased down leads provided by newspaper readers.

Police in both 1977 and 2012 showed interest in Ritterson's uncle, Harry Ritterson. Witnesses described his relationship with his niece as extremely close, and said they often socialized together at bars despite a 20-year age difference.

A reporter interviewed Harry Ritterson at his Easton home last year. He said he knew he'd been blamed for his niece's murder and wanted to clear his name. Ritterson told the reporter that he wanted to speak with investigators and offered to take a DNA test. He then cut off all contact with the reporter.

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DNA tests "inconclusive" in Bristol woman's unsolved 1977 murder

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Cold Spring Harbor, New York (CNN) -- At 85, James Watson still plays tennis every week. His hips and knees haven't given out yet, he says, and he likes grass courts.

"I try and play people who can hit the ball hard," he said Tuesday at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a Long Island, New York, research institution he directed for 25 years.

Watson has always gone up against tough competition, especially in science. Most famously, in 1953, he and Francis Crick figured out that DNA, the molecule of life, has a double helix structure, beating their rival Linus Pauling to the answer.

Solving the DNA structure set the stage for the foundation of much of modern biology, as scientists use insights about DNA to develop disease treatments, trace the inheritance of physical traits and explore how conditions can be passed down from generation to generation.

Having shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery with Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962, who are now both deceased, Watson is aware that he perhaps has no competitor in the title of most famous living scientist.

"That's really saying, there's not been another DNA," he said, clad in khaki Bermuda shorts, beige socks and brown loafers. "All you can say is that you were very lucky. You were born at the right time and your parents gave you books when you were young."

Early life

Milestones in genetics

Milestones in genetics

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Watson: 'DNA was my only gold rush'