After years of fierce debate, the controversial bill was voted into the House of Commons 382 votes to 128.
It will allow women who carry the genes for mitochondrial disease – which can carry mutations that can lead to debilitating problems including muscular dystrophy and diabetes – to have biological children without passing on the risk.
The technique involves an embryo receiving DNA from both the mother and father, and a small amount of healthy DNA from a female donor.
Ethicists and scientists have said that the DNA received from the third party donor is so miniscule as to have no effect on the child.
“It is not part of what makes us genetically who we are,” reproductive ethicist Gillian Lockwood told the BBC. “It doesn’t affect height, eye color, intelligence, musicality.”
However that hasn’t stopped those against the ruling saying that the technique is ‘playing God’ and is a slippery slope to ‘designer babies.’
The technique is currently banned in Australia.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has backed the change,
“As someone who’s had the experience of having a severely disabled child, I have every sympathy with those parents,” he told LBC radio. “This is something that can be done and something that, I think, from all the research and evidence, is not playing God with nature. This is much more like a kidney donation or a lung donation rather than some sort of fundamental change that’s being made.”
