"Once you screen for one gene, it's tempting to screen for others. The woman who's targeting arthritis, for example, added that gene to an already-planned test. Another patient, described in the same article, set out to scan his embryos for colon cancer and ended up chucking two more for Down syndrome. 'You kind of feel like you shouldn't be doing it,' his wife confessed. 'But then why would we go through all of this and not take those extra precautions?' Soon, you're hunting even for dormant genes. A PGD technique unveiled three months ago can find genes that won't harm your child but might, if combined with other genes, cause disease in a later generation. British patients are already asking clinics to filter out embryos carrying such genes."
Stories of this nature have been around for ages, although the details and the numbers coming out now are clearly more than anecdotal. As much as I try, I don't know how I feel about this issue. It really is very morally, ethically confusing. Anyone else?
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