Parents can choose their Baby

20-06-2006 12:34

Couples who are at risk of passing on serious diseases to their children are to be offered a revolutionary new screning technique to test for up to 6'000 disorders.

The technology could give hope to hundreds of thousands of parents who are facing the difficult choice between remaining childless and risk having a child with a genetic disorder.
But the test has come under scrutiny from pro life groups and disability charities, as they ask "who has the right to decide which babies live?"

The new technique, Known as pre-implantation genetic halotyping (PGH) will be able to diagnose conditions more accurately by first amplifying the DNA from the single cell they extracted from the embryo to replicate the cell's genetic material by a million times. DNA finger printing is then used on the cells and this allows clinicians to distinguish between the chromosomes carrying the affected gene and those that do not. This means that the affected gene can be tracked without having to look at the actual mutation.

A single cell is taken from each embryo and analysed to distinguish between the embryos which carry a genetic disorder and those which do not. One or two unaffected embryos are then transferred to the woman's womb in the hope that this will result in a pregnancy unaffected by the specific genetic condition.

MPs have shown particular concern about the rights of parents to use new advances to choose their baby's sex - presently only allowed if parents need to avoid a serious genetic condition linked to gender, such as haemophilia. And the Government announced a review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 last August.

The debate surrounding these issues has raged for decades - since before the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "I am horrified to think of these people sitting in judgment and deciding which embryos should live and which should die."