In an interview given to the daily newspaper “Le Monde” and titled “France: the risk of eugenics”, Prof. Didier Sicard, chairperson of the French National Bioethics Consultative Committee, considered that the practice of PGD is progressively leading to the idea that there is a right to give birth to a perfect child. He expressed the view that the insistence to test the future children for genetic abnormalities means that “the (children at risk) should be eradicated from humanity and that they are refused a right to life”.
Replying to this opinion, Prof. Pierre Leymarie and Dr Nathalie Leporrier, two specialists of PGD, rejected the view that this prenatal diagnosis is contributing to what Prof. Didier Sicard called “the terrible gap in the care of handicapped people”. They insisted that the ethical principles on which the practice of medicine is based (the concepts of autonomy and the notions of non maleficence, beneficence and justice) are fully respected in the field of PGD which is furthermore governed by laws and the opinions of the National Bioethics Committee.
This controversy is particularly interesting because it stresses on a paradoxical point concerning PGD. Although this technique is strictly regulated in most European countries where it is regularly practised, the legal status of PGD may appear to some as unethical because it may be viewed as a facilitator for those who would like to select children for reason other than medical. The need to test human embryos before birth and the consequences that may occur to those detected with some abnormalities also revives the issue of the respect due to the human embryo…