What are some of the social implications and challenges facing individuals?
Dr. Conneally: There are, of course, a lot of social implications. For example, recently I was introduced to 3-month old twin boys whose biological father has the gene for Huntington’s disease and yet they have no risk of developing the disease themselves. Knowing that the children of individuals who carry the HD gene each have a 50% chance of also carrying the HD gene, how can these boys not have any risk of having inherited the gene? In this case, the parents had in-vitro pre-implantation diagnosis. This technique is the same that is used in typical in-vitro fertilization but the eggs are grown until the 8-cell stage outside the womb. Then, one of these 8 cells is taken out of each of the embryos and tested for the gene. Those embryos that do not have the Huntington’s gene are then implanted. There are lots of questions about this procedure from an ethical standpoint. It is also very expensive. So one aspect of this situation is the societal views of selective choice of embryos and a
