The New York Times on Tuesday examined the debate over PGD.
“According to a 2004 survey by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University, about two-thirds of the respondents approved of the use of P.G.D. to prevent a fatal childhood disease and for tissue matching to save a sibling, said Kathy Hudson, the center’s director.”
Here’s their PGD description:
P.G.D. is performed when an embryo has only six to eight cells, called blastomeres. The zona pellicuda, the outer shell of the embryo, is opened with a micro needle, and a single blastomere is removed by gentle suction and sent to a P.G.D. lab for analysis.This does not kill the embryo because at this stage, each blastomere is capable of developing into a complete organism, or totipotent. It is not until the embryo passes the 16-cell stage that it begins to differentiate and give rise to stem cells. Yuri Verlinsky, director of Reproductive Genetics Institute, a leading P.G.D. lab based in Chicago, projects that in the next couple of years, P.G.D. “is going to be done for every I.V.F. case, because it definitely improves results.”
Here are some PGD numbers from RGI:
“Dr. Verlinsky reported that of the 4,000 P.G.D. tests his lab has performed, there were 900 pregnancies and 700 live births.
Of 250 babies, 5 were misdiagnosed; 2 were missed because of technical errors and 3 were because of human error – transferring the wrong embryos.”
The last time I talked to RGI they had 12 PGD cases for sibling matches.
And more “ethical questions”:
“Andrew R. LaBarbera, scientific director of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, said there are other ethical questions about creating one child to save another. The most pressing, Dr. LaBarbera said, is what happens when the cord blood transplant does not work and the parents decide to put the child through a bone marrow transplant? “
Dr. LaBarbera needs more information… Hopefully he will read my book once its published.
Read the article via NYT here.