Testing embryos and ethics: Where do we draw the line?

Embryo screening usually helps infertile parents have a healthy child. But some are concerned about how far the quest for the perfect baby will go.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. Feb. 26, 2007.

What if your parents could have specified which gender child to have? What if they could have chosen to give you a head for figures, or an artistic bent?

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis technology, a testing process that costs thousands of dollars and is offered to couples using in vitro fertilization, allows today's parents to choose whether to have a boy or a girl.

Embryos also can be tested for hundreds of fatal congenital anomalies, childhood diseases and even some diseases that don't occur until well into adulthood. Doctors can test to ensure that an embryo's umbilical cord blood or bone marrow will be a match for a sibling who needs a donor. And just as physicians can use PGD to help deaf parents avoid giving birth to a deaf child, so, theoretically, could doctors use it to help them have a child who is like them.

Physicians working in this field face a seemingly overwhelming array of demands from different stakeholders -- parents, bioethicists, anti-abortion critics, disabled-rights groups. As the field advances, individual doctors for now must determine where and how to draw the line between the craft of medicine and the specter of eugenics and fears of so-called designer babies. No U.S. law specifically restricts the uses for which doctors and patients can use embryo screening, though several European countries ban or severely restrict PGD. Meanwhile, professional societies such as the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and the Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis International Society have published guidelines related to embryo screening.