The Couple Who Lost Seven Babies | Three Parent Babies

Sharon and Neil Bernadi of the United Kingdom have had seven children since they were married. Every single one of the children has died. Most of the children died within a few hours after they were born except for Edward who died last year but lived to see his 21st birthday.

What struck me when I heard this story on Sky News yesterday is that if Sharon and Neil were Nigerians (or Africans living anywhere in Africa for that matter), some one would have been labelled a witch by now.


If she was not accused of using fetish or abiku to snuff out the lives of her children, her mother or mother-in-law, some aunt, a neighbour, landlord etc would have been accused of being the cause of her children being able to live.

Doctors have been known to tell people here that their ailments are not medical conditions and that they should seek spiritual help.

But Sharon and Neil's children all died because of a rare hereditary condition known as Leigh's disease which allows mutations within mitochondrial DNA affect the brain and nervous system.

Sharon said: 'I wasn't diagnosed until after my fifth baby had died, no one knew why it was happening, they had no answers - I would get pregnant again and just pray this time would be different. My mum sat me down and told me it had happened to her. The previous generation lost 11 children in total."

Today, Sharon is advocating for a an IVF technique that will allow for "three parent babies". The procedure will prevent a special category of diseases caused by inherited genes. Under the procedure, children could be conceived with the help of a third parent - a woman whose donated egg provides a source of healthy DNA.

A baby created in this way would have DNA from its mother and father, plus a tiny amount of donated mitochondrial DNA, which comes from the structures within cells that convert energy from food into a form that cells can use. It is this "healthy" mitochondrial DNA that would replace the damaged DNA of its parents.

The law currently bans genetic material from being tampered with in this way but will allow it if ministers are satisfied it is ethically acceptable to the public.

I'm not going to get into the ethical rightness or otherwise of the three parent baby procedure.What has impressed me in all this is the attempt to find a solution to a problem and give people who through no fault of their own are cursed with this defect a chance to have normal, healthy children.

Let's think solutions, Brethren. Let's move forward, Nigeria. Let's move forward, Africa.