Knowingly or not, those who defend the proposal to create three-parent babies typically misrepresent the science and thereby its ethical implications.
Jack Mahoney (The Tablet, 7 February) is no exception. The impact on the child created of the donor mitochondria is characteristically understated. For example, Robert Winston, whom Mahoney cites with approval, now regards the process as "no more sinister than a blood transfusion". Yet just last year he described its comparison with a blood transfusion as "totally wrong".
It is curious that Winston has changed his view given that the latest scientific evidence also suggests mitochondria has a much wider influence on characteristics and traits than such spurious analogies suggest. Once again, as with the hybrid embryo debacle, the public are being invited to approve an intrinsically immoral enterprise on the basis of a combination of false science and emotive appeals which exaggerate the potential and downplay both risks and alternatives.
Pauline Gately, Weybridge, Surrey
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