British lawmakers have passed a controversial bill allowing scientists to create babies from the DNA of three people.
The law change is a way of preventing a child inheriting a potential fatal disease from his or her mother.
But while it's been criticised in the UK, some here are hoping for a similar change in New Zealand.
Kim Williams is 30 years old and housebound. It all started three years ago when she broke her knee and while recovering her body starting doing strange things.
"One night it felt like someone had held an electric fence to the bottom of my foot and was just continuously shocking me and I couldn't stop it. And I'm looking around going, 'Who is doing this to me?'"
Ms Williams has mitochondrial disease – something she could pass on to any child she has.
In the UK a new bill offering a solution to carriers of mitochondrial disease passed its first reading in Parliament, though not every MP was in agreement.
Some object because the law allows for a child to have three genetic parents.
The process involves removing the DNA from mum and dad from the egg of the mother that carries the defective mitochondria, which is then reinserted into a donated egg cell with healthy mitochondria. The resulting baby is genetically more than 99 percent mum and dad but he or she will also carry the DNA of the donor.
If the UK bill passes its final hurdle in the House of Lords, Britain will be the first country in the world to allow embryos to be genetically modified.
Ms Williams says the UK bill offers hope.
"It is the chance between a family or nothing, and at 30 it's hard to think I could spend the rest of my life thinking it was my genetic illness that stopped us having children, me not being able to do it."
Here our laws would need to be changed to allow experimentation on viable embryos.
Then there's the issue of the donor being allowed to remain anonymous; the UK legislation allows this but so far in New Zealand we don't, believing that a child has the right to know.
To donate to Kim Williams' cause visit this website.
3 News
source: newshub archive
