Ethicists debate new use of genetic testing

Under what circumstances is it permissible to screen and select embryos based on their potential to cure a sibling?

By Vida Foubister, AMNews staff. Jan. 15, 2001.

The ethical debate over using preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select for non-disease-related characteristics or traits is no longer limited to the creation of so-called "designer babies."

In the first such case of its kind, an Englewood, Colo., couple gave birth last summer to a baby boy who had been selected not only to be free of disease but also to be a suitable stem cell donor for his sister, who has Fanconi's anemia. A month after Adam Nash's birth, his umbilical cord blood stem cells were transplanted successfully into 6-year-old Molly.

In November 2000, a group of 15 doctors, ethicists and others gathered at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, to grapple with this novel and beneficial use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Though the forum had been planned prior to the Nash case, its existence added weight to their deliberations.

"There's been a tremendous outpouring of requests for the ability to have a child that is free of a disease but also one that is HLA-matched with a child that needs a transplant within the family," said John Wagner, MD, the physician who performed the cord blood transfusions for Molly.

Dr. Wagner alone has received hundreds of inquiries about the procedure from people worldwide. Currently, he is working through this process with 10 patients, two of whom are pregnant. [...]