BABY HAS THREE “PARENTS”
Dr. John Zhang, a fertility doctor in New York known worldwide for having pioneered the technique of using DNA from 3 parents to create a viable embryo, was told by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that the agency would not authorize clinical trials aimed at testing the revolutionary procedure.
Zhang, the founder of New Hope Fertility Center in Manhattan, discovered that it was possible to transfer DNA from a mother’s egg into a hollowed-out egg donated by another woman to avoid passing on a genetic disorder. After Zhang fertilized the egg with the father’s sperm, the embryo was implanted into the mother’s womb in Mexico since the U.S. does not allow the implantation of genetically modified embryos. In April 2016 a healthy baby boy was born as a result of the experiment.
In August of this year, the FDA ordered Zhang to stop marketing the technique in the U.S. The agency is not wavering on its stance against genetically modified humans, even in cases where doing so would prevent severe disease.
JUST HOW LONG CAN PEOPLE LIVE?
The world record for living long is 122 years. Researchers don’t think it’s possible for humans to live much longer than that. They have estimated that the maximum age a person could possibly live to is 125 years according to a study published in the journal Nature. The researchers calculated the odds of someone reaching 125 years in a given year as less than 1 in 10,000.
