Each month during the semester we feature a technology with potential legal, social and/or ethical  implications and ask:

What’s YOUR answer?

One $25 Starbucks gift card awarded per challenge based on what we feel is the most judicious response to the highlighted technology, below. 

Deadline to be eligible for this month’s Starbucks gift card is November 11, 2016.

The first three parent human baby was recently born in Mexico, using mitochondria from one female parent in combination with the egg of another female and sperm of a male.  See https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107219-exclusive-worlds-first-baby-born-with-new-3-parent-technique/.  The process was done in Mexico by an American doctor for Jordanian parents.  The procedure was not legal in the USA or Jordan, and was done in Mexico, according to the U.S. doctor who carried out the procedure, because “there are no rules” and “to save lives is the ethical thing to do.”  Do you think this was ethical?  Why or why not?  As we enter the world of CRISPR-edited persons and new stem cell therapies, this type of incident is raising alarm bells about medical tourism, where patients who can afford to do so travel to countries with more relaxed laws to undertake procedures not approved in their home countries.  Are you concerned about medical tourism, and how do you think this issue should be addressed by regulation, criminal law, tort law, or other measures?