The recent confirmation of healthy births through mitochondrial donation marks a profound turning point in the way humanity confronts hereditary disease. For families devastated by mitochondrial disorders ~ conditions that often rob infants of energy, function, and even life itself ~ this technique offers something science rarely promises so definitively: freedom from genetic fate. At the heart of this development lies an elegant piece of biological choreography. By combining the nuclear DNA of the parents with the healthy mitochondria of a donor egg, scientists have sidestepped the flawed energy-producing machinery that causes these disorders. The resulting children remain genetically the offspring of their parents, but with a microscopic fragment ~ around 0.1 per cent ~ of DNA from a third person.

That sliver, however, carries enormous weight. It ensures that the child’s cells can breathe, move,........

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