September 3, 2006

• This was in today's paper.  Dr. Hughes is the doctor we have been talking to in Michigan.

  
  

  Genetic testing of embryos can determine predisposition to cancer
  

  
  

  By Amy Harmon
  NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
  

  September 3, 2006
  

  Prospective parents have been using a procedure known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis for more than a decade to screen for genes certain to cause diseases that are severe and largely untreatable, like Huntington's disease, a neurological disease that typically doesn't surface until middle age.
  

  A growing number of couples are crossing a new threshold for parental intervention in the genetic makeup of their offspring: They are using preimplantation genetic diagnosis to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life and are often treatable if they do.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

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  The test requires couples to use in vitro fertilization so that cells for screening can be removed from multicelled embryos, and it is not completely effective: There is up to a 3 percent chance that preimplantation genetic diagnosis will fail to detect an unwanted mutation.

  
  

  Geneticists and fertility experts say the greater use of preimplantation diagnosis may lead to using it to select characteristics that range from less serious diseases to purely matters of preference.
  

  “From a technology perspective, we can test anything,” said Mark Hughes, director of the Genesis Genetics Institute in Detroit, who is performing preimplantation genetic diagnosis this month for two couples who want to avoid passing on a susceptibility to breast cancer. “The issue becomes what is considered serious enough to warrant such testing and who decides that.”
  

  Some who carry the cancer mutations said they take offense at the selection procedure, which they say implies that they themselves, and many members of their family, should never have existed. It raises the specter of eugenics, they say, in the most personal terms.
  

  “It's like children are admitted to a family only if they pass the test,” said Denise Toeckes, 32, a teacher who tested positive for a mutation that increases the risk of breast cancer. “It's like, 'If you have a gene, we don't want you; if you have the potential to develop cancer, you can't be in our family.' ”
  

  Other critics oppose preimplantation diagnosis on the grounds that it could be used to select against homosexuals, women or people with disabilities. It reduces people to their genes, they say, and paves the way for the pursuit of children to suit parental ideals and for discrimination against those with perceived imperfections.
  

  Chad and Colby Kingsbury of Chicago took two months to make the decision to undergo genetic testing. But every time Chad looks at his daughter, Chloe, he said he knows it was worth it. “I couldn't imagine them telling me my daughter has cancer,” he said, “when I could have stopped it.”

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