"Advances in reproductive genetic technologies offer prospective parents an increasing array of options to help them have healthy babies, but these same advances also can raise troubling questions about the extent to which parents can or should choose the characteristics of their children.
Parents today can be tested to see if they carry a mutation in a gene that puts them at risk to have a child with a serious genetic disorder. Parents who are at risk can test embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and select which embryos to transfer to the mother's womb, or test a fetus during pregnancy to see if it is affected. Today we test for serious genetic disorders. In the future, as we learn more about genes, it may be possible to test for less serious disorders, or even characteristics such as behavior and intelligence.
This report presents the first look at the largest ever series of social science research studies to learn what Americans know, think and feel about the use and regulation of reproductive genetic testing - carrier testing, prenatal genetic diagnosis and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). These studies, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and conducted by the Genetics and Public Policy Center between October 2002 and August 2004, include 21 focus groups, 62 in-depth interviews, two surveys with a combined sample size of over 6000 people, and both in-person and online Genetic Town Halls." Source: Genetics and Public Policy Center
Download PDF Report | Link to online summary
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