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Fertility Clinics Offer Brave New World

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Posted on Sep 3, 2006
gene testing
dw-world.de

Doctors on the frontier of in vitro fertilization now offer to test embryos for predisposition to treatable cancers and other ailments using the same technique that detects some serious childhood maladies.  As scientists learn more about the code that builds human life, critics warn of an age when the wealthy will be able to buy a healthier brood.


New York Times:

Already, it is possible to test embryos for an inherited form of deafness or a mild skin condition, or for a predisposition to arthritis or obesity. Some clinics test for gender. As scientists learn more about the genetic basis for inherited traits, and as people learn more about their genetic makeup, the embryo screening menu and its array of ethical dilemmas are only expected to grow.

“From a technology perspective we can test anything,” said Mark Hughes, director of the Genesis Genetics Institute in Detroit, who is performing P.G.D. this month for two couples who want to avoid passing on a susceptibility to breast cancer. “The issue becomes what is considered serious enough to warrant such testing and who decides that.”

The process is also difficult and expensive. P.G.D., which requires in vitro fertilization, can cost tens of thousands of dollars. While insurance companies often pay for the more traditional uses of the procedure, they have not done so for cancer-risk genes, fertility experts say. The barrier to affordability, some critics fear, could make preimplantation diagnosis for cancer risk the first significant step toward a genetic class divide in which the wealthy will become more genetically pure than the poor.

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By C Quil, September 4, 2006 at 9:27 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

They don’t know what they’ll be buying. Some cancers may be avoided, perhaps, but many are the response of the human body to environmental toxins or viruses. How can you engineer that? The lifespan of an engineered human being is the same as a researcher, which makes it pretty impractical to test for diseases in the long term.

It’s this crazy race to perfect human beings, without even knowing what perfection might be or if it exists.

I think we’d be better off trying not to destroy the environment we’ve evolved to thrive in and putting our efforts into restoring it. Without that, it doesn’t matter now perfect the engineered human is.

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