"What's important is that they are not designer babies. They are not per feet babies."
Lord Robert Winston
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was a pioneering genetic test developed in the late 1980s to enable concerned parents to test for genetic disorders before they even got pregnant.
British researcher Alan Handyside and his colleague Robert Winston(b. 1940) reported their new technique in 1989. It involved checking fertilized eggs for genetic disorders before they were implanted. Unaffected embryos were then implanted through conventional in-vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques.
Before PGD was introduced, parents likely to pass on genetic disorders to their children had few options to prevent this. They could remain childless, adopt, or get pregnant with the risk of having to terminate apregnancy if genetic disorders were discovered. PGD allowed them to pick only unaffected embryos.
The technique of PGD involves stimulating a woman's ovaries with hormones to increase egg production. The eggs are then fertilized by the father's sperm. After three to five days, cells from the embryos (which at this point are called blastocysts) are removed and tested for the particular genetic condition.
Critics of PGD claimed that screening out disorders is unethical. Others claimed that the technique might increase the risk of other genetic complications, but a recent study showed that not to be the case.
