[A]n emerging ethical morass in the field of reproductive medicine: what to do when patients seeking to get pregnant select embryos with DNA that could lead to a disease or disability. Should cliniciansโ desire to help their patients have children override concerns about possibly doing harm to those children?
[P]atients will want to select an embryo with a certain genetic trait. Most frequently, experts say, this happens in the cases of patients who are deaf or have dwarfism and want to have children with the same traits.
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A test can tell prospective parents that their embryo has an abnormal number of chromosomes in its cells, for example, but it cannot tell them what kind of developmental delays their child might have, or whether transferring that embryo into a womb will lead to a pregnancy at all. Families and physicians are gazing into five-day-old cells like crystal balls, seeking enlightenment about what might happen over a lifetime. Plus, the tests can be wrong.
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The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:ย A baby with a disease gene or no baby at all: Genetic testing of embryos creates an ethical morass
