Is PGD the right choice?

By: Ashley Contreras

Preimplantation genetic diagnosing (PGD) has helped parents have a healthy baby without any genetic disorders that could have caused the child a premature death. Although it has great benefits, ethical controversy surrounds PDGs.  Alan Handyside, who wrote the article “Let parents decide,” believes that legislation should not take control and decide the fate of the technology as long as no risks arise with the procedure.  Although Handyside presents his opinion very well in his article, I still have to question whether or not PGDs morality and medical procedures are correct. If legislation allows PGDs in not so “special” cases, more people will be inclined to choose the “perfect” child without both fatal and non-fatal conditions, ultimately discarding healthy embryos.

Handyside claims that although controversy is inevitable, we should take advantage of what the technology has to offer. Families can avoid the pain and suffering of watching their child suffer because a genetic disorder consumes them, just by using this method to determine which fertilized embryo has the genetic disorder and implanting only those who do not have those genes. In vitro fertilization has helped so many people who have had trouble conceiving be able to have a baby. But now it’s been taken a step further and used to generate babies with no defects life threatening or not.

Basing on the benefits of this form of technology I would accept it more but not only do PGDs determine if the embryo has a genetic disorder, it can also determine several different characteristics such as eye color, gender and hair color. This is where I start to think if giving this information is the best thing to do. Even though this information is available, I feel more people will be interested in how the child will look as opposed to how healthy the child is or the parents will choose a child that has no disorders even if they are not fatal like asthma .

This method was to create a child that is considered to be a savior child, for example Handyside mentioned the set of British parents Shanana and Raj Hashmi that were given permission to select a child an embryo with tissue that matched the tissue of their son who was terminally ill with β- thalassaemia. This disease made him have less hemoglobin and fewer red blood cells in his body. By allowing him to have a donor he was able to live. These are the times that technology shines but one should also think of the other eggs that were fertilized and how they were just discarded not for having a defect but just for not being compatible with his tissue. This is going to be more prevalent if parent are informed more about the physical characteristics of the potential child.

According to Handyside’s article “Humans have an exceptionally high rate of pregnancy failure and loss, much of which derives from the inheritance of abnormal numbers of chromosomes in the gametes. Human eggs, which are formed before birth but do not mature until decades later, are five times more likely than sperm to develop an abnormality. This likelihood increases exponentially as a woman in her late-thirties and mid-forties approaches the menopause.”  For that reason PGDs were recommended for women who had repeated miscarriage so that they could have a successful pregnancy but according to Mary D. Stephenson, M.D., M.Sc. from the University of Chicago and Mariette Goddijn, M. D., Ph. D. of the University of Amsterdam and authors of “A critical look at the evidence does not support PGD for translocation carriers with a history of recurrent losses,” claim that PGDs do not show any improvement in those women. If there is no improvement then there is no use in creating and discarding healthy embryos.
       
I believe that although PGDs is a very impressive form of technology, but it is not helping women have more successful pregnancies maybe it is not the best choice. And allowing parents to know the characteristics other than the health of the baby could incline parents to pick a designer baby.