looked up quite a bit of information about Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis, including some of the documents that follow. You came to a decision together several weeks ago. One day, as you are doing some research on the Web, you come upon an on-line discussion forum related to issues surrounding PGD. The person who has initiated the discussion has asked, “I am considering PGD before my pregnancy. My husband and I have learned we are both carriers for the gene that causes Cystic Fibrosis, and we don’t want to pass that on to our child. However, I am not sure if it is ethical or not? Should parents ‘design’ their child? Any thoughts?” Your task is to respond to her question with your own forum entry. It should be no longer than one page. Most importantly, it should state your decision about using PGD and explain the reasons behind your decision. Your reasoning should be based on your evaluation of the documents. A Figure 1 Image retrieved from the Journal of the American Medicine Association (jama.jamanetwork.org) on July 2, 2014. Figure 2 Image retrieved from www.emoryhealthcare.org Figure 3 Image retrieved from Mediterranean Journal of Hematology and Infectious Diseases (mjhid.org) on July 2, 2014. B Diagram 1 Image retrieved from www.lifeinvitr.com on July 2, 2014 Diagram 3 Image retrieved from biol1020-2012-1.blogspot.com on July 2, 2014 Diagram 2 Image retrieved from biol1020-2012-1.blogspot.com on July 2, 2014 C D Embryo Screening and the Ethics of Human Genetic Engineering By: Leslie A. Pray, Ph.D. © 2008 Nature Education Citation: Pray, L. (2008) Embryo screening and the ethics of human genetic engineering. Nature Education 1(1):207 In April 2008, Dartmouth College ethics professor Ronald M. Green's essay, "Building Baby from the Genes Up," was published in the Washington Post. Green presented his case in support of the genetic engineering of embryos, arguing that tinkering with genes could eliminate disease or confer desirable features onto our future progeny. "Why not improve our genome?" he asked. Two days later, Richard Hayes, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, rebutted, warning of a "neo-eugenic future" and "the danger of genetic misuse." These practically polar opposite opinions are two sides of a debate taking place around the world. The controversy revolves around what scientists are calling reprogenetics: the combined use of reproductive and genetic technologies to select, and someday even genetically modify, embryos before implantation—not for health reasons, but for the sake of "improvement." Introduced into clinical care in the early 1990s, PGD was first used for determining the sex of embryos to minimize the likelihood of transmitting fatalsex-linked disease genes to offspring. If there were a family history of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), for example, parents might choose to undergo embryo screening to identify female versus male embryos and then have only the female embryos implanted. (DMD is a recessive X-linked disease that affects mostly males.) Since the 1990s, clinical use of PGD has expanded from embryo sexing to single-gene diagnostic testing, such as for Huntington's disease. Today, reproductive clinicians regularly use PGD to diagnose some 170 different conditions, with two of the more common being cystic fibrosis and hemoglobin disorders (e.g., Cooley's anemia). A third and more controversial use of PGD involves screening for chromosomally abnormal embryos in an effort to improve the relatively low pregnancy rates and decrease the relatively high miscarriage rates associated with in vitro fertilization procedures (which are often due to chromosomal abnormalities). Most recently, and even more controversially, at least two British couples have relied on PGD to screen embryos for the presence of BRCA mutations associated with increased risks of breast cancer. Both couples came from families that had suffered several generations of breast cancer, and both couples wanted to eradicate breast cancer from their lineage once and for all. In Britain, all PGD procedures must be approved by a formal regulatory agency, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), and these cases initially stumped the HFEA. After lengthy deliberation, the HFEA finally approved the couples' requests. Green argues, "[T]he critics' concerns may be less troublesome than they appear." He insists that parents will not love their children any less in the quest for perfection, and children will not feel pressured to live up to perfectionist expectations; if they do, the problem is with the parenting, not the genetic manipulation. Dr. Hayes vehemently disagrees, arguing that while the technology of PGD has the potential to eliminate many horrible diseases, it could also do some real harm: "If misapplied, [these technologies] would exacerbate existing inequalities and reinforce existing modes of discrimination. . .the development and commercial marketing of human genetic modification would likely spark a techno-eugenic rat-race. Even parents opposed to manipulating their children's genes would feel compelled to participate in this race, lest their offspring be left behind." Adapted from article retrieved from www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/embryo-screening-and-the-ethics-of-human-60561 D The First Genetically Modified Human Embryo: Advance or Abomination? BY BRANDON KEIM 5.12.08 8:58 AM Scientists have created the first genetically modified human embryo. What does this mean to you? Led by Nikica Zaninovic, researchers at Cornell University added a green fluorescent protein to an embryo left over from assisted reproduction. They destroyed the embryo five days later. It is believed to be the first documented genetic modification of a human embryo. The research raises a number of thorny ethical questions. Though adding a fluorescent protein was not aimed at enhancement, but rather to illuminate developing embryos, scientists say that modified embryos could be used to research human diseases. They say embryos wouldn’t be allowed to develop for more than a few weeks, much less implanted in a