Genetic testing of embryos (PGD) is not new. Many families have selected healthy embryos this way. But the technique can also be used to save an older sibling from a life-threatening disease.
Tissue-typing PGD is done to identify an embryo that is tissue-matched for a child suffering from a severe disease requiring bone marrow or cord blood stem cell transplantation and for whom no living donor exists. Where no living donor exists, intentionally creating a donor through tissue-typing PGD is among a short list of possible treatment options.
The question can be raised about whether such a baby is really wanted or merely created as a medical commodity to save an older sibling.
According to critics, the wrongness of tissue-typing PGD stems from the fact that it is a procedure undertaken simply for the benefit of another. The embryo is subjected to PGD not to ensure the birth of a healthy child, but in order to serve the need of a sibling for a tissue-matched donor. Conceiving a child in order to harvest bone marrow or cord blood stem cells is unethical when it treats the child solely as a means to the end of saving a sibling' s life.
Although the use of tissue-typing PGD cannot provide absolute certainty that parents will view their future child with the same love and respect as their existing child(ren), neither can it prove the opposite.
Because tissue-matched siblings serve as the best possible donors for any kind of tissue of organ transplant, the fear about future coercion or exploitation on one child for the benefit of another is expressed.
For some, it opens the door for the use of PGD to select for non-medical traits, including intelligence, appearance, and behaviour.
Would you conceive a child who will serve as a tissue donor for an older sibling in order to survive?
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Well this is a hot topic.....I don't really like the designer baby thing, but it would be nice to take out the genes of some diseases though, but then where would you stop......Probably best to leave things alone.
I think it's pretty easy to say you won't now, but in that situation saying No might be a whole other ballgame. So I can not give a final position
If people want a second or so child anywayz and they are in this situation I see no reason why they should not give nature a hand. When they don't want a second or so child it becomes a whole other ballgame again.
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Belgium is one of the five centres in the world in which tissue-typing PGD is allowed. So far, only 2 babies have been born which comply with the requirements. In the first case however, the cord blood transfusion failed because they were unable to retrieve enough blood cells to start the treatment. They’ re waiting for his/her bone marrow now.
The second child was born two weeks after his/her diagnosed sibling died.
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I am not driven by people’ s praise and I am not slowed down by people’ s criticism.
You only live once. But if you live it right, once is enough.
Make poverty history.
Stop aids, keep the promise.
i think that designing a baby so it wont have any big problems like disease and deformity isn't bad, quite a plus, its not like they're going to be born without a personality. HOWEVER i dont think its cool to design a baby to harvest from it. dosnt sit well with me at all
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well think about this some families have hereditary diseases. And hopefully something like finding the cause and getting rid of it would be a good idea.
Think about it will be able to make sure our babies dont have cancer or diebties.
But changing them so they have certain colour eyes that i do not condone.
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Last edited by ash007 on Dec 8th, 2005 at 07:48 PM
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