New Uses For PGD Increasingly Raising Ethical Questions, Opinion Piece Says

The expanding use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which historically has been used to test embryos for fatal childhood diseases, is an increasingly "slippery slope" because it is being used to screen for "milder disease, the absence of useful tissue or just the wrong sex," William Saletan, science and technology reporter for Slate online magazine, writes in a Washington Post opinion piece. According to Saletan, PGD increasingly is being used to predict "[p]robability and life expectancy" of a child and to screen for "less serious diseases," such as arthritis. He notes that according to a new survey of U.S. fertility clinics scheduled for release this week by the Genetics and Public Policy Center, 28% of clinics offering PGD have used it to target genes whose associated diseases, such as Alzheimer's, do not appear until adulthood. "If PGD were evil, it would be easy to head off such abuse by banning it," Saletan writes. However, PGD "prevents hellish diseases," he says, adding, "In those cases, you have to say yes. And once you start saying yes, it's hard to say no" (Saletan, Washington Post, 9/17).


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