While not Mary Shelly's original, Frankenstein inventors continue to occupy laboratory space worldwide. Case in point: the current discovery that three-person in vitro fertilization is not just possible, but possibly an effective way to circumvent faulty mitochondria. Rewind to biology class: mitochondria is a cell's powerhouse, and mitochondria is passed directly and only from mother to embryo. Three-person IVF (a biological ménage à trois as it were) uses essential genetic information from the mother and father as in a typical two-person tango, but adds a donor egg containing healthy mitochondria (giving the child 0.1% of his/her genetic composition from the donor).
Prof Peter Braude, of King's College London, states: "The net effect is an embryo that carries the true parents' characteristics in a clean egg with healthy mitochondria."
While the O.G. Dr. Frankenstein mined the anatomical resources of the dead, present doctors mine the genetic resources of the living. Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert, adds: "...it seems that there is no grotesquerie, no violation of the norms of nature or human culture at which scientists and their bioethical helpers will balk."
Sounds like game-on, Mother Nature.
Life sometimes can be piecemeal.
Piecemeal: --adv.
in pieces or fragments
