Just as I suspected would happen...
Alarm over plans to screen out male embryos to reduce chance of autistic child
LONDON, UK: A team of doctors at one of Britain’s leading hospitals wants to create the country’s first “designer babies” free from autism.
They are preparing an application to the fertility watchdog that would allow them to screen out male embryos to reduce significantly the chance of a couple having an autistic child.
As boys are four times more likely to be born with autism than girls, couples with a family history of the condition want to ensure they have only girls. Such sex selection is not at present permitted.
The technique, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), has been used to create babies free from life-threatening illnesses such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and haemophilia.
However, screening embryos to prevent babies being born with autism would prove controversial because children born with the disorder can live long and healthy lives.
Critics claim the treatment would be a step closer to creating babies free from all imperfections.
The team at University College Hospital’s assisted conception unit in London decided to apply for a licence for the procedure after they were approached by a couple with a history of autism in the family.
Dr Joy Delhanty, professor of human genetics at University College London medical school, said couples would undergo the treatment only if autism had inflicted severe suffering on the family.
Couples requesting the procedure would need to go through a gruelling in-vitro fertilisation cycle, even though they had no difficulty conceiving naturally. The technique could be used only to prevent the hereditary form of autism, which affects about 10 per cent of cases. It is not known what causes autism in many children.
Dr Delhanty said: “Normally, we would not consider this unless there were at least two boys affected in the immediate family. We would be reducing the risk of autism. Couples are not going to undertake this lightly when we explain what they are going to need to go through.”
Two other families have previously approached the clinic requesting pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. In both cases, they are understood to have had two sons with autism and hoped to have a daughter free from the condition.
Dr Delhanty hopes that now that the rules have been relaxed to allow PGD screening for breast cancer, the authorities will also consider screening for autism. The team will research the pros and cons of the technique further before submitting an application to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
The development would be strongly opposed by disabled groups. Simone Aspis, parliamentary and campaigns worker for the British Council of Disabled People, said: “Screening out autism would breed a fear that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted. Screening for autism would create a society where only perfection is valued.”
There is no reliable genetic test for autism, but boys are more likely than girls to have the condition. Implanting only females would dramatically reduce the risk, but mean many perfectly healthy male embryos would be discarded.
Ethical campaigners said the move was yet another example of how the goalposts were being moved ever wider.
Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "It is not about taking an embryo and curing it, but about diagnosing and then throwing away."
Simone Aspis, of the British Council of Disabled People, warned: "Screening out autism would breed a fear that anyone who is different in any way will not be accepted. It would create a society where only perfection is valued."
Scientists at University College Hospital in London have applied to the watchdog Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for permission for the screening.
Rates of autism have risen ten-fold in the last decade and half a million British families are now affected. Around ten per cent of cases are thought to be hereditary.
Dr Joy Delhanty of UCH said her team would create embryos using IVF and test them at a few days old to see if they were boys or girls. Only girls would be implanted into the mother.
Dr Delhanty said: "Normally, we would not consider this unless there were at least two boys affected in the immediate family."
She pointed out that many couples in such a situation would be fertile and might not want to go through gruelling IVF.
An HFEA spokesman said the authority had a duty to consider any new applications. But Quintavalle said: "The requirements are getting wider and wider and the science can be more and more hypothetical. This getting rid of male embryos is shoddy and shocking. We need to see more evidence on the genetic causes of autism."
In a second highly significant development, British scientists said they had found a totally new way to spot problem genes and ensure that only disease-free embryos are implanted.
The technique has already been used in several pregnancies. Three are for couples with particular genetic defects which trigger cystic fibrosis but are not covered by existing tests. Two are for couples who carry defects for the muscle-wasting disorder Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. One is in a woman with a rare genetic disorder which leads to pancreatic tumours.
The new screening technique, called Pre-implantation Genetic Haplotyping (PGH) was developed by Professor Peter Braude of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London. He will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague on June 19 that it represents a major step forward.
"It is more accurate, highly reliable and available for a whole range of disorders," said Professor Braude. "It opens the doors to all sorts of conditions."
Doctors can currently use a technique called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) to test embryos for some inherited cancers and disorders such as Huntington's disease. But scientists must know the precise defect they are seeking and it can take up to a year to devise a test for each problem.
Professor Braude's method, which costs £4,100 a time, can cover many more genetic mutations and diseases. Ultimately it could even allow scientists to weed out thousands of genetic diseases.
The news was greeted with approval by Linda Ball, 37, whose son Daniel, five, has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Girls can carry the condition but only boys suffer its devastating effects.
Daniel already has problems with his legs and must wear splints at night. His parents must face the fact that he is unlikely to live beyond his teenage years.
Mrs Ball, from Daventry, Northamptonshire, knew the disease ran in her family because her brother, Vaun, died of it when he was 18. But when she became pregnant, she said, she could not bring herself to have an abortion, even though she knew she was having a son and there was a 25 per cent chance he would be affected.
Now she is delighted that the new test will give her baby daughter Helena "a real choice" when she too decides to become a mother.
Mrs Ball said: "Of course, there is debate about when a life becomes a life. But when you know Duchenne and that my little boy is going to have a lot of pain and suffering, it make things different."
For the test, scientists take blood samples from a couple and their affected child, or another relative, to work out where the problem gene lies. Using IVF, they create several embryos and remove a single cell from each when they are a few days old, to get the DNA. This is grown overnight in the laboratory which provides a much larger genetic sample. From this, the scientists can spot if the embryo is carrying the problem chromosome or a disease-free version. Only the healthy ones are then implanted.
The team next hope to offer PGH for disorders such as Fragile X syndrome, Myotonic Dystrophy and Prader-Willi syndrome.
But Josephine Quintavalle repeated her warning against further extensions of screening. She said: "I am horrified to think of these people sitting in judgment on these embryos and saying who should live and who should die."
She said huge strides had been made to prolong life expectancy for victims of cystic fibrosis and gene therapy was looking increasingly promising promising for tackling the condition.
(Sources: Sunday Times, June 18, 2006; Daily Mail, June 19, 2006)
http://www.autismconnect.org/news.asp?s ... ws&id=5778
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"nothing ventured, nothing gained"
Last edited by Reflection on 06 Dec 2008, 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
06 Dec 2008, 3:14 am
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! 
Watch this parents end up with an autistic girl. What will they do then?
