This is for the medical ethicists who obviously never buried their own children from a fatal genetic illness: Don’t pass judgment on those who choose preimplantation genetic diagnosis (“Gene test spares baby from defect; Inherited disease avoided, but birth fuels ethics debate,” Page 1, Feb. 27).
The reasons parents choose PGD are clearly well thought out and in their own families’ best interest and not for the sake of creating designer babies, as some claim. If designer babies are what couples want, they would not have to go to the expense and trouble of PGD. All they would have to do is go to the Internet or a sperm bank and fill out a form and then keep their fingers crossed that what they want is what they get.
Why should a mother who knows she is going to suffer from a disease be denied the chance to become a mother? The critics failed to mention that this baby will also have a father, who no doubt will have the resources to care for this child (after all, if they can afford this testing, they most certainly can afford decent child-care).
What about the thousands of children born in this country whose mothers choose to become crack addicts, yet these critics aren’t targeting them to not become mothers. Those are the children they should be worried about.
