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The Pros And Cons Of Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis

1635 Words7 Pages

Introduction Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a process that allows the screening of embryos that are at risk of inheriting a specific genetic disease. The embryos are generated by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and are then screened. IVF is a medical procedure where an egg is fertilised by a sperm in a test tube outside of the body. The topic of PGD and IVF is a very controversial topic that has many opinions both for and against the process. Why is this a socio-scientific issue? PGD is a very controversial topic as many people believe that you are “Playing God” when choosing the most suitable embryo instead of having a child naturally. By choosing the embryo that may be more suitable, it is not allowing natural selection to take …show more content…

To be considered for this process, there must be a known single disease/mutation that the child is likely to inherit because of family history, a previous affected child or HLA matching also known as a ‘saviour sibling’. There must also be at least a 1 in 4 chance that the serious condition will be inherited in able to get approval from the ethic committee. The use of PGD for sex selection is not permitted in New Zealand but it is allowed in other countries. This is seen as a step towards designer babies where you can choose which characteristics you want your child to …show more content…

This could mean that the genes for specific genes are being selected against and may eventually be lost. Another implication of this process is that it means there is a smaller gene pool within the population as the frequency of the genetic diseases will decrease. This could be a problem for people who are living with specific diseases/conditions today as they may feel that they are being discriminated against and like people don’t want to have children that are like them. As the PGD technology develops, it could lead to people being able to choose the babies characteristics such as gender, eye colour, intelligence etc. This is also known as ‘designer

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