I previously wrote about one couple’s touching story on their use of PGD to screen for Huntington’s Disease.
An in-depth article recently appeared on the front page of the Orange County Register which chronicled their journey and provides some additional insights into the PGD process.
How an HB couple sidestepped Huntington's disease
Genetic screening to weed out embryos that harbor abnormalities can help parents protect their children's futures. But critics contend the procedure serves as selective breeding.
By BLYTHE BERNHARD
The Orange County Register
Like all new parents, Stacy and Mitch Brookhyser wonder who their baby girls will grow up to be. Where will they go to school? What jobs will they choose? Who will they marry?
But there's one question they don't have to ask – whether the girls inherited a defective gene from their mother.
The Brookhysers went through in-vitro fertilization and genetic screening of their embryos to ensure their twins, Roxanne and Laurel, now 9 months old, would not develop Huntington's disease.
"We cared about our kids before we ever had them," said Stacy Brookhyser. "Doing this doesn't mean our children are perfect. It just means this is one less thing to worry about."
Hundreds of babies have been born across the country through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis – selecting certain embryos over others to weed out genetic abnormalities from muscular dystrophy to hemophilia.
For a fatal disease like Huntington's, eliminating affected embryos is currently the only hope for a "cure."
You can read the full article online at:
http://www.ocregister.com/news/screening-embryo-embryos-1768486-disease-brookhysers