Alana Saarinen: A Girl has three biological Parents

NEW YORK: Alana Saarinen, a girl having three biological parents her mother and father and second woman, an egg donor. Alana consequently has DNA from these three parents. Alana Saarinen loves to play the piano. She is, in all outward respects, a normal, cheerful 13-year-old growing up in suburban America.

Critics of the “cytoplasmic transfer” procedure have questioned the potential health risks and the ethics of what some regard as genetic engineering. But in the Saarinen household, there is nothing but praise for the technique that produced their “miracle” baby.

Mrs Saarinen was desperate for a baby when, at 29, she married her husband, but she knew that there was a family history of fertility problems.

That doctor recommended an experimental new form of IVF where a small amount of cytoplasm from a healthy donor egg would be injected into Mrs Saarinen’s egg cell before the in vitro fertilisation with her husband’s sperm.

When egg was being implanted into Mrs Saarinen womb a small amount of mitochondria also implanted. Mitochondria as known as power house of the cell and it is donated to baby from mother end. Mrs Saarinen became pregnant with Alana at her next attempt. “It really felt like a miracle,” she said.

While it is possible to improve the lives of individuals suffering with mitochondrial diseases, they are incurable. Approval of this procedure could therefore help to prevent debilitating diseases that currently affect some 5,000 people in the UK.