Geneticist claims that weeding out embryos with severe genetic abnormalities is ‘a tremendous blessing and a wonderful thing’ | NRL News Today: Shane McKee introduces himself as a doctor in genetic medicine. He goes on to say, "I regard the technological advances that we’ve made over the past ten to fifteen years as being a tremendous blessing and a wonderful thing that we can bring to bear to try and help individuals and families either affected with, or at risk of, severe genetic disorders to live and reproduce as normally as possible."
Analysis: Dr McKee is talking about the technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) where human embryos are produced by in vitro fertilisation and then examined for chromosomal or other genetic abnormalities in a laboratory. Those judged to be abnormal are then discarded and only normal embryos are placed back in the uterus. He regards this as a ‘tremendous blessing and a wonderful thing.’ Many embryos with genetic abnormalities do not survive pregnancy of course but many also do as people with a range of disabilities. Some of these are severe resulting in death during childhood but many others live on into adulthood.
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