Wednesday, December 14, 2011

We Can Now Safely Sequence a Fetus' Genome. Is the World Ready for This?




We've talked about amniocentesis in class where amniotic fluid can be tested to find out if a fetus has any disorders, but now researchers in Hong Kong and California are developing a technique that could read the entire contents of the fetal genome as early as 9 weeks into pregnancy. This would give us the ability to basically figure out everything about a fetus: severe genetic disease, eye color, and someday maybe even height, intelligence, or athletic ability. The question is this going to be ethical? This is going to be the huge debate (part of which we've already had in class).


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