Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 17/04/2015 16:50:01
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Laurie M Warner asked the Naked Scientists:
I wonder if you could address why, when I hear the process of mitochondrial donation discussed, I never hear any suggestion of selecting the resulting embryos (or, more likely, donor sperm) for male babies only? It seems like this would be a simple way of circumventing the concern about possible effects on future generations. I'm not in favor of sex selection in general, but in the service of eliminating a rare disease it seems justified and unlikely to affect the ratio of the general population. Perhaps there is a reason why this would be more difficult than it seems, or why it would not actually mitigate the concern of effects in the second generation and beyond?
I listen to "The Naked Scientists" and also "Ask the Naked Scientist" as podcasts (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/), and look forward to them every week.
What do you think?