Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Correspondent
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.
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% of cases. It is not known what causes autism in many children.
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.
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.”
# Tony Blair has called for a new debate on late abortions. At a private meeting he told Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, that most MPs might now back lowering the 24-week limit. He said there were “very troubling issues” involved and that the viability of foetuses had changed since the legislation was introduced in 1967.
From timesonline.co.uk
Some people have questioned whether a prenatal test would lead to abortion of the embryo, if this technique is allowed it will kill all male embryos simply because they might be autistic.
This shows the strength of feeling from some parents, and the willingness of doctors, to prevent autistics from being born.
This shows that some doctors want to eliminate autistic people, and that some parents will undoubtedly go along with this. However it certainly does *not* indicate imminent mass extermination. I was very heartened by the fact that the newspaper article was describing this technque as 'controversial' and that disabled rights groups' views were being taken account of in the article.
On its own, this measure isn't strictly dangerous to autistic people per se. It simply means that those parents who, for whatever reason, feel unable to cope with having an autistic child, can avoid having to do so. I don't think this is problematic in itself - parents shouldn't be *forced* to give birth to autistic children any more than they should be pressurised to abort. Yes, of course, there is a danger of a slippery slope, but then it's up to campaigners to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Again, I feel that if society more generally was properly supportive of autistics, then abortions for autism wouldn't happen anyway.
I think you are vastly underestimating what this shows about society in general, parents, doctors, and the attitude towards autism.
They are willing to kill any male embryo just to try and avoid autism.
You know in the Bible, when they kill all the first born sons, it is an immense tragedy, for people to allow their own sons to be killed to avoid something, you have to know it is thought of very badly.
I don't think that we are facing a world so hostile to autistics that everyone around us wishes to exterminate us all. Sure, some people (doctors and others) of a eugenicist bent would think in those terms, but the vast majority of people have simply never thought of these issues.
Sometimes people on this site can be terribly pessimistic. Personally I am an optimist.
One has to look back at history and law and the reasons why contraception and abortions were first legally allowed. The moral arguements for contraception and abortion have totally changed since then.
I had a discussion with my mum about genetic screening and she says that the genetic screening for autism is a good idea and I said oh no! :mad:
They will have perfected the prenatal test by then, and will specifically kill autistic foetuses, which is what this latest idea wants to do in a very blunt fashion.
Ethical row erupts over designer babies breakthrough
By JULIE WHELDON, Daily Mail
New fears were raised last night that science is moving inexorably to a world of designer babies.
Campaigners reacted with alarm to two developments in genetic screening.
UK experts revealed an improved method which could allow hundreds of couples to avoid the risk of having children with a killer disease. It will be quicker and more accurate than existing screening.
More disturbingly, a London hospital applied to use IVF sex selection techniques to help couples with a family history of autism - by destroying all their male embryos.
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 tenfold in the last decade and half a million British families are now affected. Around ten per cent of cases are thought to be hereditary.
Professor 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.
Professor 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 Miss 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, UK scientists said they have 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 today 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, (pictured right) 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.
THis just proves that we are unwanted by most of NT society. Most NT parents would rather not have an autistic child if given the choice. The question is, should these parent be forced to have an autistic child if medical technology is developed which would allow them to make this choice? To them, pregnancy with an autistic child would be the same as an unwanted pregnancy.
That's what they did in Hitler's Germany. Surely we have learned something from that?
Hmm, certainly makes one wonder. :?:
I don't see how a woman could be a good christian and believe in abortion on demand.
Also, are people with ASD a separate people anyway? No, yet, you seem to be saying that our removal from the future population would be 'genocide' which is bizarre.
That people use the word genocide is not bizarre at all.
Do you have some kind of definition of what you would call a seperate people?
Whether or not autistics are within your definition, eugenics of autism is lack of acceptance of said condition. Accept means trying to make society a better place for people with the condition, not to remove a diverging group of people from the earth's surface.
Accept is not an ideal I'm going to leave quite so soon.