So how does a mutation carrier gets to have a biological child AND avoid being blamed for endowing them with a potentially harmful genetic inheritance? This is where science comes into play and the genetic screening is performed on a selection of embryos instead of after birth.
This screening technique - called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) - involves creating embryos using IVF, then removing a cell from each of them when they have divided to give eight cells. Genetic analysis of this cell can reveal whether each embryo contains the normal or mutated copy of BRCA1. This embryo will be the one selected for the pregnancy.
Is this the responsible action we expect from carrier parents-to-be? Is this an ethical solution to the genetic endowment problem? And isn’t this eugenics?
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