Pondering II
So the parents in the last post used medical technology to stunt the growth of their daughter in response to her mental disability. What if they could have detected the disability prior to their daughter being born? Or even before the pregnancy began?
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, can be used to screen for various diseases and genetic deficiences. Prospective parents can use the technique to eliminate passing down damaged or mutated genes. This is used to reduce the chances of the child developing diseases and/or givving the pregnancy a better chance of being successful. It is a very expensive procedure but it is hard to argue with this use of technology.
But PGD can have other uses as well. The technique can be used to create a child that can be chord-blood cell donor for sick siblings. This is a little more questionable. If the parents wanted another child anyway then I see no problem using this technique to get the "added benefit" of a guaranteed donor. On the other hand, if the process is used so that a pregnancy results in a donor and the parents had not planned on another child to begin with a few more questions come into play. I would hope that the parents would love the new child as much as any other but is that a guarantee? Would it still be OK if the parents had the child, used the chord-blood and then gave the new child up for adoption?
Another use of PGD is quite controversial. Perspective parents can use it to choose the gender of their child. If the parents say, "We've already had 3 boys and we really want a girl, too," that may be alright. Just to be clear, if the parents want a boy after having a bunch of girls that is just as OK. But in many cultures there is pressure to have babies of specific gender. Most often boys. Wide spread use of PGD for this purpose could upset the natural ratio of men to women. Sure, this is price restrictive at the moment but that doesn't mean it couldn't become more widely available. And this problem has arisen already. The imbalance leads to many problems.
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, can be used to screen for various diseases and genetic deficiences. Prospective parents can use the technique to eliminate passing down damaged or mutated genes. This is used to reduce the chances of the child developing diseases and/or givving the pregnancy a better chance of being successful. It is a very expensive procedure but it is hard to argue with this use of technology.
But PGD can have other uses as well. The technique can be used to create a child that can be chord-blood cell donor for sick siblings. This is a little more questionable. If the parents wanted another child anyway then I see no problem using this technique to get the "added benefit" of a guaranteed donor. On the other hand, if the process is used so that a pregnancy results in a donor and the parents had not planned on another child to begin with a few more questions come into play. I would hope that the parents would love the new child as much as any other but is that a guarantee? Would it still be OK if the parents had the child, used the chord-blood and then gave the new child up for adoption?
Another use of PGD is quite controversial. Perspective parents can use it to choose the gender of their child. If the parents say, "We've already had 3 boys and we really want a girl, too," that may be alright. Just to be clear, if the parents want a boy after having a bunch of girls that is just as OK. But in many cultures there is pressure to have babies of specific gender. Most often boys. Wide spread use of PGD for this purpose could upset the natural ratio of men to women. Sure, this is price restrictive at the moment but that doesn't mean it couldn't become more widely available. And this problem has arisen already. The imbalance leads to many problems.
Labels: Intelligence Beyond Bio, Science
posted by LP Cards Fan at
3:09 PM
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