Three -parent rights

Is it possible to have three parents?

Is It Possible for a Child to Have Three Parents? Daniel Goldman in The Spiritual Anthropologist

Translated by Alexandra "Renoire" Alekseeva, XX2 century

Recently, with the help of the latest medical developments, offspring from more than two parents were obtained. The ethical nature of this technology is still being discussed, but perhaps if we find examples of such cases in nature, ethical problems will be much easier to solve.

A test tube baby from three parents

To solve a number of issues, doctors have developed a procedure that leads to the birth of a child from more than two biological parents. Of course, there are cases of artificial insemination and surrogacy, when a child has two genetic parents, and there is a third – a mother carrying a child.

In more specific cases, a child can be obtained from three genetic parents. This procedure, in particular, was used to avoid inheritance of genetic disorders in the mitochondria of the mother. Many people believe that genes are limited to the DNA found in cell nuclei, but this is not true: human mitochondria have their own DNA. The mother's mitochondria, and therefore any genetic problems with these mitochondria, are transmitted through the egg from the mother to the children.

There are several ways to solve this problem. The procedure that has recently been used for this purpose is very similar to cloning. The process begins with the fact that a healthy egg is taken from the donor. The nucleus is removed from it, and then the nucleus is extracted from one of the eggs of the expectant mother and implanted into the donor egg. Next, a new "composite" egg is fertilized with the father's sperm. As a result, the DNA of the nucleus comes from two biological parents, and mitochondrial DNA comes from a donor.

Ethics

There are a number of ethical issues related to the birth of children from three parents. The main problem is that this method is insufficiently tested. The need for this procedure is rare, and it is unethical to create human embryos just to test it.

Another problem is that such a procedure can be a step towards creating designer babies. The US Congress has banned most genetic manipulation of embryos, but it is still unclear whether this one is included in their list. It is usually considered acceptable, provided that the reason for the conduct is purely medical.

The last ethical consideration concerns parental rights. Given that such children have the DNA of three parents, some argue that the opinion of the third parent should be taken into account.

Note from "XX2 century". Parental rights are a controversial thing. Although they say that parents are not chosen, and interaction with genetic parents can have as arbitrary (both conditionally positive and conditionally negative) influence on a child as interaction with any other people. One way or another, in the modern world, parental rights turn out to be legally significant when, for example, it comes to inheritance of property. In connection with triple parenting, the question arises: will the child have the right to be the heir, including the "mitochondrial parent" or not, and if so, to what extent. Strictly speaking, legally triple parenthood already exists – in the case of children in same-sex marriages or in bisexual ones, when one of the spouses has fertility problems. In such situations, a third person often acts as an egg or sperm donor. For example, in 2013, a child was born in Canada who has three people registered as parents on his birth certificate.

"Natural" triple parenting

If there were people who naturally descended from more than two parents, then from the point of view of ethics it would be much more acceptable and artificial to create such offspring.

In fact, this happens rarely, but sometimes eggs (during one menstrual cycle) are fertilized in two different sexual acts. This condition is called superfecundation. Moreover, these two sexual acts can be with different partners, then this is called heteropaternal superfecundation.

A person may also have cells of two different human organisms. This phenomenon is called chimerism. The form of chimerism that occurs in humans is called tetragametic chimerism. Such cases are more common than previously thought, and they have become a problem in a number of legal disputes, for example, parental ones.

Under certain conditions, both heteropaternal superfecundation and tetragametic chimerism can occur. In this case, one organism will consist of cells of two different organisms, each of which will have a separate father.

If the developing embryo does not wither due to the fact that two different cell lines will conflict with each other, then it will continue to develop with this feature. As a result, we will get one child with three parents.

Rare

However, this is most likely extremely rare. Any estimate of the frequency of this phenomenon will be just a guess. But since we are dealing with a large and relatively unexplored topic, we will rely on the data we have on hand. There are a number of factors that need to be taken into account. First, it's how often superfecundation occurs.

According to some studies, up to 2.4% of fraternal twins were conceived as a result of superfecundation. This is an old statistic, but I will try to give at least a very rough estimate here.

Chimerism is traditionally considered a very rare phenomenon. But this opinion seems to be wrong. According to newer studies, almost 10% of living fraternal twins show signs of chimerism. And in polyzygotic triplets, this indicator reaches 20%.

It is difficult to establish a reliable percentage of the birth of fraternal twins, since it varies in nature. It seems that factors such as ethnicity, age, and whether the mother is a twin, etc., affect the frequency of occurrence of fraternal twins.

Identical twins occur in about four cases per thousand. If the average number of twins per 1000 pregnancies is 13, then this means that on average, in 9 out of 1000 cases, fraternal twins appear. I'm not sure if polyzygotic triplets (and n-nyashki) are among them, but I guess so; in any case, it doesn't matter for the level of accuracy I need. Finally, according to WHO, there are approximately 123 million intentional pregnancies and another 87 million unintended pregnancies each year.

Thus, we get an average of about 1.89 million fraternal twins. If 2.4% are heterozygous twins conceived as a result of superfecundation, then we will have about 45,000 of them. If 10% of the number of these twins is characterized by chimerism, then there will be about 4500 of them. To be honest, this figure is a bit overstated, but even if the real value would be equal to 1% of this, then all over the world we would have 45 heterozygous twins with chimerism per year. Again, this is just a guess. To understand whether this figure really has anything in common with reality, it would take much more effort. Here I will confine myself to a curious assumption.

Conclusion

Children from three parents conceived without IVF are extremely rare, but since they exist in principle, the ethical nature of children with three parents created as a result of medical intervention becomes much less problematic. And if the cases described by me are not as rare as indicated in the assessment, and if the public becomes aware of the existence of such people, then the law in any case will have to take into account the rights of three biological parents.

Thus, even if children from three parents are conceived in a special way, different from how it happens in nature, the phenomenon itself is still not something fundamentally new.

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