The other woman: Evaluating the language of ‘three parent’ embryos

Clinical Ethics

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2015, Pages 97-106

  Jones, David Albert ^a  

^a Anscombe Bioethics Centre   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Egg donor; Gametes; Media; Mitochondrial donation; Three parent

Indexed keywords

EID: 84960344906     PISSN: 14777509     EISSN: 1758101X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1477750915599721     Document Type: Article

References (75)

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14. The example of mitochondria might seem to be an exception to this rule, for it seems most probable that these structures developed from what were once independent organisms existing symbiotically within a host organism. So these ‘parts’ did exist before the ‘whole’. However, the transition here from endosymbiotic organisms (wholeto-whole relationship) to organelles (part-to-whole relationship) is utterly unlike manufacture. The parts were not produced separately, as parts, immediately prior to the assembly of the whole. Rather, the new kind of living organism evolves from previous living organisms (a whole evolving from wholes). In any case, mitochondria are now well-integrated parts of a whole, as they have been for well over a billion years. They are not organisms that could exist independently outside a cell.
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