This week leading international scientists will warn a Parliamentary inquiry that the Government’s 3-parent baby plan raises serious public safety concerns and should not be permitted to go ahead. Currently, the proposed technique - known as ‘mitochondria replacement therapy’ - can only be used for research purposes, and involves transferring both parents’ DNA into a donor egg. Ministers say the procedure will help prevent mothers from passing mitochondrial disorders to their children. But in a letter to the Commons science and technology committee, the group of scientists will warn: ‘The safety of mitochondrial replacement therapy is not yet established sufficiently to proceed to clinical trials.’  An editorial in the New Scientist magazine warned that ‘we may have seriously underestimated the influence that mitochondria have’ in light of new research which ‘suggests that they play a key role in some of the most important features of human life.’