Three-parent baby born to infertile couple in world first

A highly experimental birth technique was conducted by few reputed doctors in Ukraine with miraculous results. An ordinary Ukrainian couple was trying to conceive a baby for almost 10 years, and was disappointed with no results. The desperate need of the couple for their own baby also made them go through four rounds of IVF.

However, the results were still negative and they had almost lost of the hope of having their own children. IVF is the test tube baby technique in which the sperm and egg are manually combined in a laboratory. The doctors tried to create a new type of three-person IVF and were successful in doing so. For the first time, this three-person IVF procedure has allowed this infertile couple to become fertile and have their own child.

Three-person IVF method 

This couple was blessed with a baby boy using a new technique called the pronuclear transfer, and the doctors regarded the technique as being ‘highly experimental’. In Kiev, the doctors fertilized the father’s sperm with the mother’s egg into another egg donated by an anonymous (name not revealed) woman.

Valery Zukin, the supervisor of the entire procedure revealed, that later this egg was again implanted into the womb of the mother, who gave birth to the child naturally. The couple was completely awe-struck by the news and at first couldn’t believe that such a miracle was really possible.

Scientists claim the method to be unsafe 

The three-person IVF procedure is not entirely new, and has been used previously for preventing inheritance of genetic disorders. However, this was the first time that the same was used as a potent method of treating infertility. The director of Nadiya clinic, Kiev remarked that this particular procedure is effective and could be used in the future to help women in their 40’s to give birth naturally, using their own eggs. However, other scientists have stated that this procedure could not be scientifically tested and that it could give false hope to infertile women trying to conceive.

Dr. Zukin further added that this procedure is highly effective for infertile women suffering from the condition commonly known as ‘embryo arrest’. This is an uncommon condition and is suffered by 1 out of 150 IVF patients.

In this condition, the embryo of the patient simply stops growing even before it’s implanted. This new pronuclear procedure has not yet been scientifically proven as stated by the chairman of British Fertility Society, Adam Balen. They are also quite cautious about espousing this method for improving IVF outcomes.

The baby boy has a tiny amount of DNA from the anonymous woman and has inherited its genes from his original parents. Yesterday the Nadiya clinic in Kiev announced that the child was born healthy on 5th January, 2017. In response to the scientists’ statements of this method being unsafe, Dr Zukin stated that they ought to try a new procedure for knowing its outcomes correctly. The couple had gone through 4 IVF cycles, and could never conceive even after 10 years of trying. HFEA approved the new procedure and this is considered as a historic decision.