Let's (Cautiously) Celebrate the "New Eugenics"

It's a subject doctors, health providers and medical experts are discussing feverishly, but often quietly: whether parents should undergo genetic tests, either before conception or after, to determine if their unborn child might have a serious genetic disorder. Hanging over the debate is the specter of eugenics--fears that the ability to manipulate the health of our future babies could devalue the sanctity of life. About three percent of babies in the United States are born with a major structural or genetic birth defect. It's a bracing occurrence for a family and a multi-billion hit to our already strained medical system. So it's fair to ask whether preemptive genetic screening makes sense, medically and ethically. Ronald Bailey at Reason wrote an article recently on the birth of a genetic screening company, GenePeeks, which when matched with its sister company Matchright helps women using in vitro services virtually evaluate donor sperm that has been screened for Mendelian defects (diseases caused by single gene mutations). It's the brainchild of Princeton geneticist Lee Silver and the Harvard Business School professor Anne Morriss. Morriss was spurred in part by her own experience. She and her wife bought sperm from a reputable sperm bank to father their child. Alec was born with medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency, a rare (1 in 17,000) genetic disorder that blocks him from converting certain fats into energy, leading to seizures and death in many c...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news