Embryo Screening: Yes or No?
The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) wants to know if you think embryos should be screened for genes that may contribute to diseases like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Pre-implanatation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is already being used to screen embryos for inherited diseases in which the presence of a mutated gene always causes disease, such as cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs.
Dr Gillian Lockwood, who chairs the ethics committee of the British Fertility Society, said:
Genetic disease is increasingly the principal cause of premature death in the developed world.
The embryo screening technique of PGD would allow potential parents who know that they carry damaging genes to realise every parents’ ambition to have healthy children.
I’m not sure if Dr. Lockwood’s statement is completely accurate. For most of our adult lives, accidents are the leading cause of premature death. And what’s her definition of “healthy”? If it’s like some overachieving parents today, healthy means competitive and successful, much like the “human equivalent of a limited edition Hermes satchel.”
BBC News, November 10, 2005
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POSTED IN: Genetic Testing, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis
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7 opinions for Embryo Screening: Yes or No?
Qadira
Nov 10, 2005 at 9:55 pm
So much money and time wasted on seeking perfection, when the actual process of living is unpredictable. I can do everything as perfectly as possible, and still be run down by a drunk driver. There’s no accounting for every variable in life.
I voted ‘no’ but that was more of a knee-jerk reaction than a well-thought-out response.
I would actually say that yes, I think that people trying to conceive and bring a pregnancy to term successfully, should be able to take advantage of such technology- why bring a child into the world if it has good odds of some nasty disease or a life-long condition? Women already have the option for some genetic screening part way through pregnancy, so I don’t see this as vastly different. If anything, it seems more compassionate to terminate that life when it is a mere bundle of cells, than waiting until it has a beating heart.
The issue that is problematic for me, is how to define "serious" disease that would place that embryo on the "do not implant" list. How far do we presume to understand the complexity of the human body & spirit?
It seems more ethical to me to do some kind of genetic screening on the parents to determine if combining their dna would result in various ailments, -before- creating the embryos themselves.
It’s very murky and my opinion (as that of anyone else’s) is colored by my set of morals and religious beliefs.
Lei
Nov 11, 2005 at 4:12 am
Q, As always, your comment is very thought provoking. Yes, why not take a step back and forbid people from procreating if they have a combination of genes that could cause disease? I think genetic testing seems so simple and straightforward compared to changing lifestyle habits that the laziness in us wants to think it’s as simple as filling up some test tubes.
Lei
Nov 12, 2005 at 8:03 am
Posting this for Krissy (http://www.aboutweblogs.com…)
I am of the opinion that more infomation is always better than less. We did the neuchal fold testing on Charlie to screen for Down Syndrome. We agreed that we would not terminate the pregnancy if the test was positive, but we wanted to know. We wanted to start to deal with how we were going to need to love a child with DS before he arrived, so that he arrived to parents who were prepared.
We’re talking about screening eggs here, not sticking your two year old to see if you’ll toss her out with the trash. Deciding not to implant an group of cells that might have a debilitating illness because you’re the kind of people who don’t think they could handle it is not the same as dumping a kid with CF off at an orphanage.
There are all kinds of ethical imparatives out there and the assumption that there is something sleezy about genetic testing or stem cell research. Of course, people were violently opposed to blood transfusions when they first came out. And some peopel still object to organ donation. Mixing someone else’s blood with your own??? ABOMINATION!!
Really, it’s all just more of the same. The more we know how to vaccinate people, the better off people live. The more we know about an egg before it becomes a human the more we can, as a society, start to leave behind genetic glitches that produce illness.
A person may not like the way it tastes in their mouth, but I don’t know of a true argument other than "Dude, that totally squicks me out".
Which, while valid personally, is not exactly a scientific argument.
Lei
Nov 12, 2005 at 8:05 am
Krissy, Technology advances and some people embrace it while others don’t. When IVF first came out, it caused all sorts of people to think "ABOMINATION". It’s definitely a slippery slope, but I am more inclined to leave it up to the individual (and thus far, I’m the only one to have voted "yes" in the poll!).
Krissy
Nov 12, 2005 at 1:45 pm
I voted "yes"! I thought that lone vote was mine.
Stupid poll. I’ll go and try to correct it now.
mark
Apr 3, 2008 at 10:22 am
i vote YES
hal
Apr 3, 2008 at 10:25 am
mandy told me to vote yes
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