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9 results

  • 4 - A Right to a Healthy Child?

  • Carmen Draghici, City University London
  • Book:
    Procreative Rights in International Law
    Published online:
    26 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 168-233

  • Summary

    Chapter 4 argues that there is a (limited) human right to a healthy child, to the extent that medical technologies are available to detect and prevent disease in the future offspring at the conception or gestation stage. It considers two claims arising in Strasbourg litigation: access to timely, accurate prenatal testing and to the termination of pregnancy on grounds of foetal abnormality, and the selection of healthy embryos through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis by aspiring parents afflicted by serious hereditary illnesses. While many judgments are country-specific and regard the failure to correctly implement existing laws or the adequacy of remedies in case of errors, the chapter also questions the legitimacy of total bans on embryo/foetal selection against disability; it maintains that, notwithstanding possible objections based on, inter alia, the message sent by permissive laws to existing disabled people and the human dignity rhetoric, they fail to satisfy the principle of proportionality.

  • Introduction

  • Carmen Draghici, City University London
  • Book:
    Procreative Rights in International Law
    Published online:
    26 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 1-10

  • Summary

    The Introduction provides an overview of the conceptual background and main themes of the book. It briefly considers the advances in assisted reproduction technology (e.g. in vitro fertilisation and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) and their benefits for aspiring parents. It suggests that these scientific developments not only have led to the emergence of new trends in bioethical politics, but have also inspired claims in the international human rights arena. In fact, an increasing number of legal cases, most notably in the European Convention on Human Rights system, has started to establish a set of rights in connection with access to medically assisted procreation; they are an extension of autonomy rights, the right to respect for family life and non-discrimination rights. The Introduction offers a synopsis of each chapter, outlining the key bioethical and legal controversies examined therein, as well as the central arguments proposed by the book in light of international litigation.

Procreative Rights in International Law
  • Insights from the European Court of Human Rights
  • Carmen Draghici
  • Published online:
    26 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024
  • Draghici contends that the advent of assisted reproductive technologies has given rise to new fundamental, albeit not unqualified, rights. They include the right to use medically assisted procreation (e.g. artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, potentially gamete donation, posthumous conception or surrogacy) in order to become a parent (typically where natural procreation is hindered by infertility, sexual orientation, relationship status or adverse life events), the recognition of intention-based parenthood in relation to donor-conceived children jointly planned and raised with the genetic parent, and the right to pursue the conception of a healthy child (e.g. through recourse to preimplantation genetic diagnosis and embryo selection to avoid severe illness in future offspring). To substantiate this claim, the book relies on a comprehensive analysis of international case-law on procreative autonomy, contextualised by a discussion of highly divisive bioethical controversies, from the status of embryos to the morality of genetic screening and third-party reproduction.

  • Enhancing genetic virtue: A project for twenty-first century humanity?

  • Mark Walker
  • Journal:
    Politics and the Life Sciences / Volume 28 / Issue 2 / September 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    17 May 2016, pp. 27-47

  • The Genetic Virtue Project (GVP) is a proposed interdisciplinary effort between philosophers, psychologists and geneticists to discover and enhance human ethics using biotechnology genetic correlates of virtuous behavior. The empirical plausibility that virtues have biological correlates is based on the claims that (a) virtues are a subset of personality, specifically, personality traits conceived of as “enduring behaviors,” and (b) that there is ample evidence that personality traits have a genetic basis. The moral necessity to use the GVP for moral enhancement is based on the claims that we should eliminate evil (as understood generically, not religiously), as some evil is a function of human nature. The GVP is defended against several ethical and political criticisms.

  • Chapter 17 - Endometrial receptivity

  • Edited by Roy G. Farquharson, University of Liverpool, Mary D. Stephenson, University of Chicago
  • Book:
    Early Pregnancy
    Published online:
    05 October 2010
    Print publication:
    09 September 2010, pp 161-170

  • Summary

    For many years, it has been good clinical practice to offer chromosome testing to women with recurrent miscarriage. This chapter addresses parental chromosome testing and describes couples carrying a structural chromosome abnormality ascertained through recurrent miscarriage work-up. Conventional parental chromosome testing is offered to couples after they have experienced recurrent miscarriage. If one of the partners carries a structural chromosome abnormality, products of conception can have a normal karyotype, the same karyotype as the carrier parent, or an unbalanced karyotype. The latter can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth or the birth of a child with major congenital impairments. Molecular cytogenetic techniques such as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) are improving all the time and could play a role in the future in establishing submicroscopic chromosome abnormalities, resulting in another way of assessing abnormalities which play a role in couples with recurring miscarriage (RM).

  • 65 - PGD for Chromosomal Anomalies

  • from PART III - ASSISTED REPRODUCTION
  • Edited by Botros R. M. B. Rizk, University of South Alabama, Juan A. Garcia-Velasco, Hassan N. Sallam, Antonis Makrigiannakis, University of Crete
  • Book:
    Infertility and Assisted Reproduction
    Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    15 September 2008, pp 643-656

  • Summary

    This chapter describes the data on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for aneuploidy screening (AS), focusing in two main topics: the chromosomal status of human gametes and embryos and the clinical application of PGD-AS in assisted reproductive technology (ART) and its controversies. In oocytes, the most frequent abnormalities detected were single chromosome trisomy and monosomy. The maternal origin of aneuploidy is prevalent in abnormal human conceptuses, and reproductive maternal aging is the important factor affecting the frequency of aneuploidy. Previous history of spontaneous abortions is a risk factor of pregnancy loss even in patients with normal karyotype. New evolving technologies will be able to significantly increase the sensitivity of PGD and reduce the diagnostic errors. Biological events such as mosaicism, postzygotes aneuploides, and trisomic rescue can cause diagnostic errors. With the view that efficiency can be significantly improved, PGD-AS has to be considered as a tool to implement ART procedure.

  • 23 - Consensus views arising from the 48th Study Group: Implantation and Early Development

  • from SECTION 5 - CONSENSUS VIEWS
  • Edited by Hilary Critchley, University of Edinburgh, Iain Cameron, University of Southampton, Stephen Smith
  • Book:
    Implantation and Early Development
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    01 June 2005, pp 283-286

  • Summary

    The multidisciplinary systems biology approach that is needed to assess endometrial receptivity should be used to understand the reciprocal dialogue between the embryo and the decidualised endometrium. This chapter focuses on human embryo research and the development of appropriate functional models of implantation that will allow the investigation of molecules mediating blastocyst-endometrial/decidual interaction. Ectopic pregnancy could be considered as a model to study the failure or the absence of mechanisms that limit implantation. Experience with cell nuclear replacement has identified the key role of cytoplasmic and nuclear factors for normal embryonic development. The conventional measurements of sperm concentration, motility and morphology only act as surrogate markers of fertility. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) should be carried out by specialist centres that have a multidisciplinary genetic support infrastructure including genetic counselling, and clinical pathology accreditation (CPA) qualified cytogenetics and molecular genetics laboratories.

  • 14 - Pre-implantation genetic testing

  • from SECTION 2 - THE EMBRYO
  • Edited by Hilary Critchley, University of Edinburgh, Iain Cameron, University of Southampton, Stephen Smith
  • Book:
    Implantation and Early Development
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    01 June 2005, pp 169-182

  • Summary

    Pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT) can be classified as either pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) or pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS). PGS aims to improve the outcome of assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatment for the subfertile by testing for a number of the more frequent chromosome aneuploidies in an attempt to improve implantation and reduce the incidence of miscarriage. The first successful clinical application of PGD, to avoid the X-linked condition adrenoleukodystrophy, used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify a specific repeat on the Y chromosome in order to sex embryos. Patients performing embryo biopsy must be approved and licensed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) after inspection. The use of PGD for the prevention of transmission of serious genetic disease has largely been overtaken in volume by use of embryo biopsy to improve in vitro fertilisation (IVF) outcome for subfertile couples.

  • Reproduction in the Noughties: will the scientists have all the fun?

  • MARTIN H. JOHNSON
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Anatomy / Volume 198 / Issue 4 / April 2001
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    07 June 2001, pp. 385-398
    Print publication:
    April 2001

  • The past 20–30 years have seen major advances in our understanding of human reproduction and in our ability to manipulate it, as well as major social changes in human reproductive and sexual attitudes. Many of these advances and changes developed out of the first successful in vitro fertilisation (IVF) of the human oocyte. It is also the case that 30 years ago few foresaw what was to come, and many were at best doubtful and often were very critical of the scientific work which led to human IVF and to many of the subsequent developments. This lack of foresight provides us with a lesson about the dangers that we face in looking forward and attempting to predict the future. This review will try to convey, not comprehensively but through examples, the flavour of current activities in Assisted Reproduction clinics and research laboratories around the world and what is being talked about for the future in respect of emergent patient demands and anticipated clinical needs. This clinically driven approach will form the basis for consideration of some underlying scientific aspects of reproductive research, some of the ethicolegal issues that may arise, and the implications of this anticipated future for our current approaches to medical education. The future will be considered not simply in terms of the New Reproduction itself but also in its interaction with the opportunities and challenges presented by the New Genetics. It is perhaps in the interaction between these two fields of endeavour that some of the most difficult challenges ahead lie.