Source: Nature News
Non-invasive procedure could make prenatal testing easier, but it comes with ethical problems.
Until last week, scrutinizing a fetus’s DNA for indications of genetic abnormalities meant tapping into the mother’s womb with a needle. Now there’s a test that can do it using a small sample of the mother’s blood. MaterniT21, a Down’s syndrome test that Sequenom of San Diego, California, launched in major centres across the United States on 17 October, is the first of several such tests expected on the market in the next year. It signals the arrival of a long-anticipated era of non-invasive prenatal genetic screening, with its attendant benefits and ethical complications
Read More: Fetal gene screening comes to market
Cartoon by Bob Moran
