It also found there was no evidence to suggest the techniques
were unsafe, but said further research was still necessary.
Critics, however, slammed the decision as a breach of ethics,
saying there were already safe methods like egg donation to
allow people to have children without mitochondria defects.
Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority began a
public discussion of the topic at the government's request last
year. "Although some people have concerns about the safety of
these techniques, we found that they trust the scientific
experts and the regulator to know when it is appropriate to make
them available to patients," Lisa Jardine, chair of the group,
said in a statement Wednesday. British law forbids altering a
human egg or an embryo before transferring it into a woman, so
such treatments are currently only allowed for research. The
regulator will now pass its findings to the government, which
would need Parliamentary permission to change the law. Similar
research is going on in the U.S.,