Afternoon
Despatch and Courier,
By Tara Patel
Is there such a thing as a tailor-made baby? No such thing
yet, exclaimed a bemused British Doctor, Dr. Alan Thornhill,
visiting Mumbai and India for the third time --- this
time in association with city doctor Dr.
Aniruddha Malpani's Infertility Clinic.
Medical technology has advanced a great deal, he explained,
but the field of genetics is complex. India still has
a long way to go before we can order a baby to specification.
Besides, there are ethics involved. For the time being,
even the effort to treat genetically-flawed babied before
problem. And if couples have been unable to have a child,
they should seek medical redressal to the problem."
The P.G.D. procedure, says Dr. Thornhill, was originally
developed to diagnose genetic disease at an early embryonic
stage but it has a number of clinical applications nowadays.
If there is a genetic flaw in either routine and the
results consistent. Similarly, the diagnostic material
required to accurately and reliably diagnose chromosomal
abnormalities or single gene defects from a single cell
have been refined largely in the 1990s …"
Is one of the other clinical applications
of this procedure? He smiled, having anticipated the
questions, he is aware that a large number of termination
of pregnancies take place in India after a female foetus
has been diagnosed. "It is a social issue we do
not have in the west," says Dr. Thornhill. The
law in the U. K does not permit the hospitals and doctors
to use the P. G. D. procedure specifically for sexual
identification. "The law says you can't although
there are the old cases when somebody may want to have
a male or a female child to balance the family…it's
family may have four girls in a row and may want a boy.
May be future, family balancing may be allowed, but
at present it is not allowed in the U.K"
Beside, he says, if an associated test was run for
sex determination, it would be costly. " In vitro
fertilization costs abut 1,200 pounds, and a P.G.D.
procedure another 800 pounds." Needless to that
it is only in the Asian and middle Eastern countries
that there is a premium on male children. In Dr. Alan
Thornhill's experience, Jordan is an example where a
genetic test is run for sex determination, and in some
states of the U.S.A. "family balancing" is
legally permitted.
How is it done? Well, in an I.V.F. cycle a woman's
ovary is stimulated to produce a number of eggs. These
are collected and mixed with sperm to produce embryos.
Three days after the mixing, at the eight-cell stage,
a chemical is used to drill a hole into an embryo to
remove a cell for genetic testing i.e. male and female
constituents. If it's the desired sex, an embryo can
be implanted in the uterus…and all this is not
as easy as it sounds. The success rate is a mere 30
to 45 percent!
In conclusion, Dr. Alan Thornhill posed a thought-provoking
question. "If ever family selection is permitted
legally, rather than kill a healthy female or male foetus
through medical termination of pregnancy, isn't it better
to permit an option of a pre-implantation diagnosis
before pregnancy is initiated?"
These are ethical-medical issues the world needs to
think about.
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