” “Antenatal genetic tests should fall within the "general scope of predictive medicine", but in fact they are very often used to "select" the embryo, sometimes for "family planning" reasons that hide veritable "eugenic practices". The alarm came today from Kevin Fitzgerald, associate professor of genetics at Georgetown University, Washington, during the press conference for the presentation of the International Conference, "Human embryo at re-implantation. Scientific aspects and bioethical considerations", to be held in the Vatican on February 27th and 28th on the occasion of the XII General Assembly of the Papal Academy for Life. By stressing the "emphasis" that is placed today on antenatal "screening", the geneticist highlighted that these tests "only try to determine what embryos already have undesirable genetic defects but they do not ask themselves how to prevent such faults". In addition, noticed Fitzgerald, such tests are used for "family planning", which does not prevent "either defects or diseases", but is only driven "by the wish to have a boy or a girl", i.e. to find out whether the chromosome "y" is present or not. Hence the recent alarm of the US Bioethics Commission, which denounced that "the practice of antenatal screening is based on the principle that the parents can choose their children’s qualities and select them on the basis of genetic information". This is not too far from eugenics.” “
