The Ethics Of Three-Parent Babies

Headlines across the globe are celebrating a seemingly miraculous medical achievement: eight babies were born in the UK with DNA from three different people. The procedure, designed to prevent the transmission of debilitating mitochondrial diseases, has been hailed as a victory for modern science. It feels like a moment of progress, a bold step forward. And yet, as the applause rings out, an uneasy silence follows. What exactly have we done? And at what cost? And what’s next?

This is not just a story about science. It is a story about what it means to be human, how we wrestle with our own fragility and limitations, and how close we are to turning the sacred beginning of life into a curated, commercial product.

What Are Three-Parent Babies?

Let’s break it down. The term “three-parent baby” refers to a child born using a technique called mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT). The goal is to prevent a mother from passing on faulty mitochondria, those tiny powerhouses in our cells that keep the body functioning. Mitochondrial diseases can be devastating, affecting organs, muscles, and brain function, often leading to early death.

The solution? Replace the mother’s faulty mitochondria with healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. This results in a baby with DNA from three individuals: nuclear DNA from the mother and father (which determines things like appearance and personality), and mitochondrial DNA from a donor woman.

Technically, this third DNA makes up less than 1% of the baby’s total genetic makeup. But as any bioethicist will tell you, even the smallest changes can carry massive consequences ethically, psychologically, socially, and biologically.

Healing vs. Enhancement: A Slippery Slope

At its core, this technique is about healing; preventing suffering, stopping disease in its tracks. And who could object to that? The idea of eradicating a cruel illness before a child is even born is powerful, noble even. I myself have an incurable genetic condition, so I get the cheer. But here’s where things get murky.

Once we open the door to genetic modification, even for therapeutic reasons, how long before we walk through it for enhancement? If we can replace defective mitochondria, why not upgrade other cellular components? Why not select for intelligence, athleticism, or appearance? Even editing a race is an option. 

It’s a worldview that subtly transforms children from gifts into projects.

This is the slippery slope that bioethics warns us about: the shift from healing what’s broken to enhancing what’s already whole. The line between compassion and control, between medicine and manipulation, becomes harder and harder to see. It may sound obvious, but it is one of the biggest ethical questions of our times; and as science develops new forms of genetic engineering we need to keep the healing vs. enhancement questions at the forefront. 

And while this mitochondrial treatment is not technically editing nuclear DNA, it normalizes a mindset: that a child can be engineered, adjusted, or optimized before birth. It’s a worldview that subtly transforms children from gifts into projects. Objects of human will and fitted to what we perceive to be right instead of subjects with inherent dignity.

Identity, Bonding, and the Hidden Costs

Even if we could ensure physical safety (and we can’t yet), there are deeper questions that technology can’t answer. What does it mean to be born with three parents? What happens when a child finds out their life was created not just with love, but with a scalpel, a lab, and a third genetic contributor? In some cases the answer is nothing, but in others it’s led to personal tragedies. 

Studies are already showing that children conceived through anonymous sperm or egg donation often experience identity confusion, longing for biological roots, and complex psychological challenges. It would be naïve to assume that three-parent babies will be immune to these questions, especially as awareness grows around the ethics of donor conception.

And what about parental bonding? Can we pretend that knowing a third person was biologically involved in your child’s conception won’t affect a mother’s experience or a child’s understanding of who they are? While we can’t fully predict how this third DNA will impact these children, we do know that reproductive technologies already carry this heavy side effect.

The Commodification of Life

At the heart of this issue is something even more urgent than genetic risk: the commercialization of reproduction. A few weeks ago, I was having a lovely girls night and we were discussing PCOS, endometriosis, unexplained infertility, and other conditions that some of us were facing. Our light and caring chat took a dark turn when one of my friends made the bold and uncomfortable comment society doesn’t want to hear out loud: “I guess nowadays if you don’t have kids it’s because you don’t have money.” We stared at each other awkwardly. As in how mean, but also we got the point. 

Conception is no longer a sacred moment shared in the quiet love between two people. Increasingly, it’s happening in clinics, with price tags, contracts, and donor profiles. Like most things: The more money you are willing to invest, the better quality product you get. Children are being selected, purchased, implanted, and in some cases, discarded if they don’t meet expectations. While I understand this is often still done out of love and a sincere desire to have a family, we cannot play blind to the fact that as a culture we’ve redefined baby-making. And is it for the best? I believe it has deeply changed us. 

We’ve turned the most intimate act of creation into a service industry.

Egg harvesting itself raises ethical red flags: the physical burden on young women donating their eggs, the financial incentives offered to those in economic need, and the exploitative potential of turning human eggs into high-value commodities. While the news coverage on these eight three-parents babies has been positive and uplifting since it does bring health to the child, there is little to no mention of the women donating their DNA material. 

Is it true? Everything has a price? Even our DNA?

And let’s not forget: the very technology used to create three-parent babies is built on the backbone of in vitro fertilization (IVF). A procedure with its own growing list of concerns. Recent data suggests that babies born through IVF and three parents may face higher health risks. When life begins in a lab, it often stays there.

We’ve turned the most intimate act of creation into a service industry. Into a marketplace. Into a product.

Gene Editing: The Door We May Regret Opening

Many proponents argue that this isn’t gene editing in the classic sense, like CRISPR and other tools that snip and replace genetic sequences. But this is semantics. The principle has already changed.

Once we accept that some babies must be created in laboratories to be "healthy," we edge closer to normalizing human selection. And once that becomes socially acceptable (as it currently is), the pressure will mount for parents to edit more, upgrade more, “secure the best future” for their children, even if it means making choices no parent was ever meant to make.

This doesn’t mean we reject all science. But it does mean we must stay fiercely aware of what is at stake.

In the name of eradicating disease, we may also be eroding something essential: the humility to accept life as it is given, and not only as it can be made. 

The Excitement… and the Danger

To be fair, the scientific achievement is staggering. To even imagine a world without mitochondrial disease is breathtaking. It’s okay to celebrate that. It’s okay to feel awe.

But ethical discernment asks us to hold two truths at once: excitement and caution. Hope and hesitation. Because when it comes to the human person, especially at the moment of conception, we must tread lightly.

We must ask not only can we? but should we?

The children born through this technique are real, beautiful, and valuable. But their creation also represents a profound shift in how we view life. And as the technology spreads, the long-term risks may not be medical but moral. A subtle erosion of the romance of parenthood and the mystery of life itself.

Children Are Not Products

At the heart of all of this is one clear truth: children are not products.

They are not projects to be completed, corrected, or perfected in a lab. They are not experiments. They are not commodities exchanged in petri dishes between clinics and clients. They are gifts. Fragile, unrepeatable, sacred gifts.

There is something deeply romantic and beautifully ordinary in the natural conception of a child: a moment of union, of love, of mystery. We lose something enormous when that becomes a process we purchase.

And while we may never return to a pre-technological age, we must fight to preserve the spirit of why we have children at all. Not to prove what science can do. Not to conquer disease at any cost. But to receive the miracle of life, in all its vulnerability and wonder.

Where Do We Go From Here?

There’s no denying the incredible potential of genetic science and I do hope we get to eradicate many other diseases this way. But potential isn’t permission. The temptation to control every aspect of life; from disease, appearance, origin, must all be met with restraint, humility, and ethical clarity.

The babies born with three DNA sources are here now. They deserve protection, love, and respect. But the rest of us—scientists, lawmakers, ethicists, and parents—must now ask the harder question: what does this mean for the future of humanity?

Will we continue to chase the dream of perfection, or rediscover the beauty of the imperfect and the given? Because if we forget that children are not ours to design, but ours to love, we won’t just change how we create life, we’ll forget what it means to live it.