Question: Hello Claire, My question is, when an egg has just been fertilized, scientists can see from the DNA the sex and health of that baby. Will scientists ever be given the power in the future to determine and select who will live or not? My concern is that people like Steven Hawkins, with MN disease would not have existed. I do not want anyone to play God.

Claire Bryer answered on 15 Jun 2015:

Hello! What a thoughtful question. This will take a while to answer.

To answer the first bit of your question, it is definitely possible to take DNA from the mothers placenta (which contains some of the growing baby’s cells) and find out whether that baby has an inherited disease. This is quite stressful to the baby though so this is not done unless you really believe that there could be a problem with the baby. Scientists have also developed ways to look at free-floating fetal DNA. Free-floating fetal DNA is the baby’s DNA that is floating around in the mothers blood. This is less stressful to baby but more difficult to do. These tests are done today by the NHS in mothers of a certain age to see if the baby may have Down Syndrome, as you are more at risk of having a Down Syndrome baby if you are an older mother.

To answer the second bit of your question I do not believe that scientists will ever be given to power to choose who will live or not. It is a personal preference to have genetic testing on your baby, and the decision will always be down to the parents. Many years ago when ultrasound was first used, people were scared of it, now it is the norm to get an ultrasound to check your baby is developing properly. I think this would probably happen with genetic testing. The abortion law still applies to everyone.

I do think the law needs to be clearer when looking at pre-genetic testing of embryos in IVF. This is a grey area and the law does need to keep up with the science. It was reported that Victoria Beckham used gender-selective IVF to ensure she got her daughter, Harper. This I do not agree with. However you could argue that humans have messed around with nature for a long time, and this is no different. In countries where they are not allowed many children they kill girls because they want a boy, so this is changing the gender ratios in a different way.

Like you, I also do not want anyone to ‘play God’. I don’t think anyone wants to choose who can live and who can’t. I think in the future we may be able to treat these diseases with gene therapy without aborting the baby….but then who is to argue that the motor neurone disease isn’t what makes Steven Hawking so amazing in the first place!

So basically that is a really tough question to answer!