Chicago scientists are boasting that they have used a combination of in vitro fertilization and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to screen out embryos with potential disability and eliminate them. Published in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, the study says a birth defect which is tied, in two thirds of cases, to the presence of a third 13th chromosome (called trisomy 13), was prevented in a born child by screening embryos prior to implantation.
The condition known as holoprosencephaly reportedly causes death shortly after birth in 80% of cases and in 20% mild to severe retardation. However, scientists note that a third of the children with trisomy 13 are born completely normal, thus pre-natal diagnosis which detects trisomy 13 in-utero leaves parents, they say, with an “agonizing” choice over whether or not to abort since the child they abort may be perfectly healthy.
Dr. Yury Verlinsky, the lead researcher in the study, used PGD rather than pre-natal diagnosis to kill off already conceived children (embryos) which were found with trisomy 13. “To me, freezing a six-celled embryo is better than aborting a fetus,” said Verlinsky, founder and director of the Reproductive Genetics Institute, a private fertility clinic which is responsible for the birth of nearly half of the about 1000 babies born after IVF-PGD screening.
The Chicago Tribune reports that PGD adds about $2,000 to the cost of in-vitro fertilization, which ranges from $6,000 to $12,000 per attempt.
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(This update courtesy of LifeSite News.)
