One in every 5,000 children are born with a genetic mutation, and scientists are now looking into birthing babies with three parents to help prevent diseases caused by mitochondrial mutations, the Medical Daily reported.

Most recently, researchers led by Douglass Turnbull at Newcastle University used a three-person in vitro fertilization to help prevent babies from inheriting mitochondrial mutations from a parent. The process involves effectively transferring genetic material from the egg of a woman with a mutation into the egg of a healthy woman, which is then fertilized by male sperm. 

Turnbull, a neurologist who has treated plenty of children with fatal disorders, became motivated to work on this project after treating a family who had lost several children due to genetic diseases. 

Nature describes the potential clinical process:

First, a fertilized egg cell is zapped with a laser, making a hole in its membrane. Then the embryologist eases a pipette into the hole and plucks out the pronuclei. Next, the researcher empties a fertilized donor egg of its genetic material and squirts the pronuclei into the hollow egg. The feat takes several minutes (see video). 

So far, trials have been completed in monkeys, mice, and human cells in culture. And though the research has proven to be successful so far, plenty of scientists argue against it, noting that the procedure might be unsafe, not entirely vetted or vigorously tested, and still remains an unknown and misunderstood frontier. Several bioethicists, meanwhile, are worried that the procedure “would open the door to further genetic alterations of human beings with unforeseeable consequences.”

But Turnbull argues that three-way IVF isn’t the same thing as producing designer babies. “This is about preventing serious, life-threatening, disabling diseases,” he told Nature.