Bill Maher

But

cells as you were pointing out earlier are that you know the found the foundational building block of all organs and health and oftentimes to understand um uh human health you have to understand it in a model system that's similar let me give you an example this is as long as we're staying edgy there's something new that's being done in mexico and in europe called three-party ivf it's illegal here it's actually being done in the uk i think i had one here

We know that as women age, the number of eggs that can be successfully fertilized and create healthy humans goes down with age.

We know this, right?

So one of the things that makes it harder as women get older is the mitochondrial genes that control some of the splitting of the egg and the formation of more cells, et cetera.

Turns out that people figured this out first in mice and then in non-human primates that you can take the DNA from the woman who wants to be the mom, the sperm from the guy that wants to be the dad, and you can take those and put them into an egg from a younger donor

where the DNA has been taken out, but the spindle and the things that pull it across with the mitochondrial genes are intact.

And you can end up with a healthy kid.

How do we know this?

Because there are women who have mitochondrial genetic diseases.

This was done in the UK.

And all your mitochondrial genes come from your mom.

And so these people wanted to have kids.

So someone said, hey, maybe you could do this.

So they did it first in mice, then in non-human primates.

And now in Mexico and elsewhere around the world, people who are having trouble conceiving or by standard IVF are starting to do this three-party IVF.

It's not yet legal in the United States.

But this is a good example where it went from mouse to non-human primate to human.

So you would say, gosh, would you want to go from mouse to human?

Like, that's a pretty big jump.