Campaigners voice concerns as UK approves three-person IVF

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The UK looks set to become the first country in the world to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people, after the government backed the IVF technique. Professor Dame Sally Davies, the government's chief medical officer announced today that the government intends to bring forth draft regulations to allow the abnormal creation of human embryos in order to address mitochondrial diseases. In a statement, Dame Sally described the research as "life-saving treatment".

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said: "In fact, the vast majority of embryonic children created in the laboratory are killed because they do not meet the 'quality control' requirements dictated by scientists involved in such increasingly macabre experiments. Also, over the past 20 years, proponents of human embryo experimentation have repeatedly claimed that such research offered the promise - and perhaps the only hope - of finding treatments for serious diseases. The public has been repeatedly misled. It is the biotech industry's excuse to create a genetically manipulated baby."

Dr David King, the director of Human Genetics Alert, said: "These techniques are unnecessary and unsafe and were in fact rejected by the majority of consultation responses. It is a disaster that the decision to cross the line that will eventually lead to a eugenic designer baby market should be taken on the basis of an utterly biased and inadequate consultation."

Draft regulations will be produced this year with a final version expected to be debated and voted on in Parliament during 2014.

Newcastle University is already pioneering one of the techniques that could be used for three-person IVF.