Selecting embryos lacking a gene linked to disease raises both hopes and fears

The use of PGD is often criticised as being a "slippery slope" towards the development of designer babies. Designer implies we design the baby. We give information to help the patient choose. It's the difference between choosing your dress in the department store and going to Paul Smith and asking him to design the suit. The former is what we are doing, not the latter.

In reality, this technique is highly regulated and each time we want to use it we have to inform the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to gain permission. It is used to prevent a child being born with genes which mean they will develop often devastating diseases.

So far, the majority of cases have involved screening for genes that will definitely lead to disease. An example is the gene for Huntington's.

Now we are starting to see the technique used for high-risk genes, such as BRCA1 for breast cancer, where there is a high chance of disease developing, but also a chance that it might not.

It would be devastating to have a gene in your family which meant that your child had a high risk of developing a disease.

Why should they have to use donated sperm or eggs in order to have a baby without the defective gene and thereby lose all the hundreds of other genes that make up their family line to ensure this one gene is not passed on?

By using PGD to screen out BRCA1, we can let a couple have a child with a normal risk of breast cancer.

Another alternative would be for a couple to conceive naturally and undergo tests when the baby is in the womb. If the child is found to carry the gene, they have the option of termination.

People should know that PGD could help them avoid having to have an abortion if genes are screened out before implantation.

One issue that needs to be addressed is the cost. The PGD process and one cycle of IVF treatment can cost up to 8,000. I believe that the NHS should take up at least some of this cost.

I would defend the right of couples to choose PGD.

Josephine Quintavalle, Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Core):

THE birth of this child is a cause for celebration, as every birth should be. But we also need to consider the embryos who were not given the chance to live. Those embryos were deemed inferior and rejected.

We have to ask where all this is leading, and we must not be afraid of confronting the word "eugenics". The goalposts have already moved so quickly. To start with, PGD was used only where the child would definitely suffer from a lethal disease; then the disease had simply to be acknowledged as serious. Now we are picking embryos based on a percentage chance of them developing conditions later in life which we are already capable of treating. There is a real chance the discarded embryos would not have developed breast cancer at all.

Using PGD to screen for the BRCA1 gene is not a cure for breast cancer. It is simply a process of discarding those embryos which might possibly develop the disease.

We need to consider what genetic defects we will screen for next. If a parent is told we can choose an embryo which will not develop asthma, then the likelihood is they will opt for that, or any other perceived defect they are offered the chance to screen for.

Questions have to be asked, too, about the long-term effects of PGD biopsy on the embryo? You are taking one or two cells from a tiny developing embryo. What effect might this have later on as the child grows up?

People need to face the true complexities of these procedures. Ethical cures for cancer or other genetic diseases will not be achieved by eliminating the carriers.