(RNS) Just when you think you’ve heard it all, another weird notion comes down the pike. Now scientists at England’s Newcastle University say they have grown human embryos from three parents.

It’s called “Pronuclear transfer in human embryos to prevent transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease” — at least that’s the title of the 12-author paper published in the scientific journal “Nature.”

The way it seems to work is this: Mommy A and Daddy A risk producing a child with a genetic disorder, because Mommy A’s eggs have faulty electronic controls called mitochondria. So Mommy A and Daddy A provide egg and sperm to create an embryo in a Petri dish through in vitro fertilization.

Then the scientists step in with their repair kit, and that’s where Mommy B comes in.

Mommy A and Daddy A’s new embryo has “pronuclei” containing their DNA. But, because Mommy A’s eggs risk faulty development, the scientists put embryo A’s pronuclei into Mommy B’s egg, which has better mitochondria.

The scientists told BBC News it was rather like “changing the battery on a laptop.” Professor Doug Turnbull, the lead author of the study, said: “The energy supply now works properly, but none of the information on the hard drive has been changed.”

The idea — I hate to say “concept” — is to short-circuit programming that might cause any number of diseases. They say one in 6,500 children is born with an incurable disease because of genetic mutations in the mitochondria. So manipulating Mommy B’s egg, which has been abnormally fertilized to produce a one-cell embryo, can fix the problem before it happens.

“A child born using this method would have correctly functioning mitochondria, but in every other respect would get all their genetic information from their father and mother,” Turnbull says.

They’ve already created human embryos like this, with an 8 percent success rate. That is, 8 percent of the modified embryos grew to the blastocyst stage — about 100 to 150 cells — before they were destroyed.

While these mitochondrial shenanigans cross every ethical norm on the planet, it’s not exactly a lead story here in the States. U.S. news organizations are too busy falling all over themselves — and each other — to get the latest scoop on which Catholic bishop is in (or belongs in) the dog house to pay attention to such Brave New World newsbreaks.

But no matter whether you are for or against human battery-changing experimentation, it’s pretty big news.

Supporters are all excited that their designer babies will avoid genetically inherited diseases. The rest of us are shaking our heads wondering what the world is coming to. I mean, two mommies and one daddy? Frankenstein looks positively tame by comparison.

The bottom line, of course, is that all this changes what it means to be a parent, and especially what it means to be a mother, in ways we cannot comprehend. How do you explain to the children of this process they were genetically manipulated to the point they really have three parents? How do two mommies negotiate birthright?

Of course, there is a fleet of lawyers in the wings figuring it all out. Who signs what papers giving up which rights and all that. But, at the end of the day, there will be children — scientists estimate within three years — whose parentage is confused beyond all imagining.

Just something to consider on Mother’s Day.

(Phyllis Zagano is visiting professor of theology and religion at St. Leo University in Florida and author of several books in Catholic studies. She also holds a research appointment at Hofstra University in New York.)