[JLemay]

This is such an incredible breakthrough and a huge win for science and families alike, however its sad that despite decades of work there is still no cure for mitochondrial disease. But the chance to preventing it being passed on is still such a major improvement. Also it’s sad that only the uk is capable of doing this atm bc it was the first country in the world to introduce laws to allow their creation after a vote in Parliament in 2015, while other countries were debating that it would open the doors to genetically-modified "designer" babies

[FL33TW00D]

The UK leads in this space as a previous PM had his newborn die of a genetic disease.

Amazing the domino effect.

[Sammi]

David Cameron a conservative ex PM.

He's currently working in the genetic disease space: https://www.paediatrics.ox.ac.uk/news/former-uk-prime-minist...

[FerretFred]

It is an incredible breakthrough and if it prevents disease then all well and good, but are our Administrative Systems set up to handle such an arrangement?

[maxerickson]

Sure. The mitochondrial donor can be treated as a source of tissue and you are all done.

[isodev]

I really struggle why we keep maintaining some archaic definitions around the “family unit” anyway. So someone has 3 parents instead of 2 - nothing wrong with that.

[drekipus]

It's ok to not know why something is.

My daughter doesn't know why we have archaic laws around seatbelts either, but she's 3.

[progbits]

This makes no sense.

The seatbelt laws are not archaic by any meaning of the word, and they can be justified with rational arguments.

Care to try doing the same for family thing? Aside from tradition.

[AYBABTME]

It's not that hard to imagine a rational argument where humans have evolved to grow with one or two parents, leading to all sorts of psychological prewiring.

(I'm not supporting the argument, just saying that it's not hard to come up with a plausible rational one)

[Yeul]

Before DNA testing nobody could tell anyway.

[im3w1l]

Cells can exchange mitochondria so in theory it might be possible to flood the body with healthy mitochondria and get them to slowly take over.

[yorwba]

I would expect that to activate the immune system. "the unique components of mitochondria, when exposed, reveal their prokaryotic history and are recognized as foreign by innate immune receptors triggering an inflammatory response." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6218307/

Maybe if you suppress the immune system, introduce working mitochondria, and then stop taking the immunosuppressants, any mitochondria that are still outside cells get cleaned up and the ones that got absorbed are shielded and can do their job.

[inglor_cz]

Maybe we can find some way to deliver mitochondria right into the cells.

[dr_dshiv]

Mitochondrial health is definitely going to be a big theme in the coming years.

[type0]

> it might be possible to flood the body with healthy mitochondria and get them to slowly take over

it's not possible, these are organelles that are too big to be taken up by your cells, unless you can magically teleport them somehow to each cell