Ethic Dilema – Embryo Screening

Embryo Screening

The use of embryo screening is a major ethical concern in this era. For those of you who don't know, embryo screening checks an embryo to see if it's carrying any alleles (genes) for a genetic disease.

How is this done? The fertilisation is done in a petri dish, this is IVF (In vitro fertilisation) let's say we get four embryos fertilised. Around the 8 cell stage these embryos are tested for a particular disease that the parents want to know if it's present or not. Remember that these are genetic diseases, this is why the parents would do it, depending if they have a background on any genetic disorder.

Here is the dilemma, once you get the results let's say you get out of your four embryos two that carry the disease and two that do not. Firstly the two that carry it are disposed, these could've grown into two human beings. Also out of the two remaining embryos only one will be put back into the mothers uterus for u
it to develop, the other is also disposed.

Before we go on into the disadvantages let's see what good things come up from embryo screening.
It is true that you can ensure the quality of life of your child by ensuring health and also it would help to eradicate these diseases. However as good as this is, the process is throwing away like it was garbage in this case 3 potential human beings, wether they are ill or not.

Also ethically only from the IVF religiously that is already wrong because we have no right to interfere with the course of nature, also if now we can choose our babies to be healthy it could seem that it will escalate to what you could call "design babies" for a frivolous purpose, like choosing the gender.

Embryo screening is a new way to ensure the health of your baby, however as much as technology has advanced for us to be able to do this, it has to go further so we can do it the right way, because there is no any other to see it, but the killing is true, and it's present.