Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or embryo screening as it has more recently been called, is at the center of extreme controversy as it has emerged that four IVF clinics in the USA have been implanting embryos with defects into women who want to have a disabled baby.
Embryo screening is used to determine which embryos are healthy and which embryos carry a genetic defect, for instance, Cystic fibrosis, HMSN, Downs Syndrome, Sickle Cell Disease or Dwarfism. Only healthy embryos are put into the potential mother's womb. It is particularly useful for couples who may otherwise have a child with a life threatening condition and who may not want to take the risk of having children and in the early days of its development, embryo screening was only used for conditions which killed a child.
Now, the criteria is much broader.
Women with a family history of hereditary cancers have also been known to use the technique. A UK clinic has even suggested lowering the autism rate by deliberately eliminating male embryos (because boys are much more likely to have autism than girls) in families where there is a history of autism and ADHD syndromes.
However, four clinics now claim to have used this process in reverse, for disabled couples who actually want to have a disabled baby, for instance, deaf parents who also want their child to be deaf.
One woman with dwarfism said
'You cannot tell me that I cannot have a child who's going to look like me. It's just unbelievably presumptuous and they're playing God.'
Many disabled people do not actually consider themselves as disabled and view their deafness or other defect as normal and see the views of those who are able bodied as ignorance or fear. Everyone's normality is different so what may be normal for one person is not for another.
Some doctors have criticized the idea of deliberately creating a disabled child, and others find it so amazing it is unbelievable. It is still not clear whether the four clinics who anonymously took part in the survey, really had provided this treatment for disabled couples or merely wanted to start a sensationalist debate.
Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, from a clinic in Las Vegas, said he would consult ethicists if he was ever asked to create a disabled baby.
'Clearly it crosses some bounds', he said.
When scientists first developed this technique, they may not have envisioned the frightening new set of possibilities that gave couples seeking IVF treatments.
