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Li Liu, Sarah Wheeler, Rise of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in China Raises Ethical Questions for All, Clinical Chemistry, Volume 64, Issue 3, 1 March 2018, Pages 617–618, https://doi.org/10.1373/clinchem.2017.284117
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Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a procedure performed in conjunction with in vitro fertilization to select embryos for implantation that are free of specific genetic mutations by removing a small number of cells from the embryo to screen the DNA. The recent development of the DNA-editing CRISPR technology raises difficult questions about ethics that are painted against the backdrop of each country's culture, history, and predominate religions.
Despite the first reported successes in 1990, the implementation of PGD has been slow globally; however, that is changing in China, as highlighted by Cyranoski in a news feature in the August 2017 issue of Nature (1). This news feature highlights the developments and challenges facing China, but which are also applicable to all countries and worth sharing here. The past few years have seen large-scale growth of PGD in China as the country lifted some family size restrictions, opening the door for many older women to seek fertility treatment, and the central government has made reproductive medicine a priority, which includes PGD. In China, PGD is regulated for use only to avoid serious disease or assist infertility treatments. However, in the US, most decisions are left to individual clinics.
