Research Recant

Don't Believe Everything You Read—Even in Science Journals

This is a cautionary tale on accepting announcements of scientific breakthroughs at face value. In late 2016, "fertility provocateur" Dr. John Zhang announced the first birth of a three-parent child, through a technique he called mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), one of three IVF techniques used to combine material from the eggs of two women and the sperm of one man.¹ The goal of such therapy is to avoid transmitting disease to a child through mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cellular material outside the nucleus of a woman's egg. This international experiment involved Jordanian parents, an American team, and a clinic in Mexico.²

Initial...