On Wednesday the journal Science Translational Medicine reported that a fetus's entire genome has been determined by researchers using a sample of a pregnant mother's blood and a saliva sample from the father.
The process is less invasive and risky than the amniocentesis, albeit much more expensive. However, given the anticipated demand for such procedures, it is predicted that the price tag will plummet quite quickly.
The same ethical issues that are attached to amniocentesis - increased abortions for fetuses with poor prenatal diagnoses for conditions such as Down syndrome as well as parental preferences for gender and other traits are obvious. But it doesn't take much imagination to envision "Brave New World" scenarios down the road where these blueprints are more widely used. For example, will it become requisite for a person to submit his/her blueprint for employment or admission to an educational institution? Will government or industrial databases of these blueprints be used to justify unfathomable actions? Will this lead eventually to the ground up construction of human species to serve human interests rather than God's design?
He gives us freedom of choice: what decisions will we make?
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