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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 sex selection 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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