Genetically modified humans: here and more coming soon by Nick Lane - Essay Example

Critical Analysis of an Article by Nick Lane This paper is a critical analysis of an article which is, ‘Genetically modified humans: here and more coming soon’, written by Nick Lane, an honorary reader at University College, London. The thesis statement is that a baby can be created by two mothers genetically which can save him from inheriting dreadful diseases, and this procedure can lead to the development of designer babies. In his article, Lane has illustrated the genetic modification of human beings and has described the procedure that can be used to create babies using the eggs of two women.

He tells about the research work that is being carried out by a research team in UK whose purpose is the creation of an embryo with the participation of three parents and without any chance of the baby inheriting dreadful diseases. Lane further tells the role of mitochondria in the procedure. He tells that if the egg from one woman contains defective mitochondria, then these can be replaced by those attained from the donor egg from another woman, and since a mitochondrion itself contains DNA, this would mean that the baby is going to have genes from two different women or mothers.

However, Lane states that this procedure gives the baby chance to live with the healthiest genes. Lane has used a number of evidences to support his conclusions and also mentioned at times that the research work from the mentioned scientists is not complete and is on its way. Then, is not Lane jumping to conclusions? There has not been even one research that is completed successfully stating that this mixing up of mitochondria from two women is the perfect way of saving a baby from getting diseases in any stage of life.

For example, the article states the procedure used by Chinnery and Turnbull in which the nucleus is removed from the egg containing faulty mitochondria and is moved to the donor egg which contains healthy mitochondria, which results in the baby having nuclear DNA from its real parents and mitochondrial DNA from the donor woman. Chinnery has stated that they have only been able to swap the nuclear DNAs of those failed embryos which had failed the fertility treatments and had been left by the parents at the fertility clinics (Hayden, 2008); whereas, the article states that Chinnery and Turnbull have been using the procedure of transplanting nuclear DNA from a living embryo to a living donor egg.

Moreover, Lane has come up with contradictory conclusions in his article. On one hand, he states that this procedure of genetic engineering or genetic modification can lead to an individual leading a healthy, long, intelligent and active life with less or no risk of inheriting diseases; and on the other hand, he uses evidences to conclude that this technique is full of risks regarding the transfer of genetic or mitochondrial diseases from the mother to the baby. In short, the reader of the article is, at times, left confused what to believe and which direction to go.

One paragraph sustains the former idea while the proceeding one would support the latter one. Lane has been jumping to contradictory conclusions with such confidence that the reader finds difficulty to decide whether the concept of designer babies is just another research or is it really a big step towards genetic modification of the human species. References Lane, N. (2008, June 04). Genetically modified human: here and more coming soon. NewScientist. Retrieved 5 May, 2011, from http://www.newscientist.

com/article/mg19826591.700-genetically-modified-humans-here-and-more-coming-soon.html?full=true Hayden, E. (2008). A step toward three-parent babies? BioEd Online. Retrieved 5 May, 2011, from http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=3797