Persuasive Essay On Prenatal Testing

Child is a gift from God. Every parent hopes for a healthy child. However, abnormalities in the fetus growth becoming common nowadays. These may be due to physical, radiation and chemical factors. These factors will cause deformities such as genetic mutation which causes mental retardation, abnormal body buildup and other conditions which bring a lot of troubles in the future to the child themselves and their parents. Modern technologies and innovations in the medical field had developed a method to detect the abnormality before delivery and prevent this future tragedy to happen. This method is known as prenatal screening. There are several advantages and disadvantages of prenatal screening.

Christine Le, an accountant living in Flushing, New York, gave birth to a healthy baby “Nathan” on January 29th, 2010. She found out that she was pregnant with her first child when her period was late. She had the routine prenatal care starting at 12 weeks and delivered at 40 weeks in a hospital with the present of her husband, Robert, and the in-laws. To insure her baby was healthy, Christine underwent several prenatal diagnostic methods like amniocentesis to examine for genetic defects. Another method was ultrasound; its purpose is to assess fetal age, multiple pregnancies, size and shape of the fetus. Christine underwent numerous lab tests to ensure that there are no complications (Berk, pg.43). Lab tests like a complete blood count that screens

If they still choose to have prenatal testing done and received a positive result, they would need to make a choice. One of those choices could be to terminate the pregnancy. Another one is to be as prepared as possible and get ready to have a baby with medical issues. If there was going to be a problem, “parents can use the information they receive from the testing to prepare for the possibility that their child may have special needs” (healthguidance.org). Although these results can help the parents make informed decisions, there is the possibility of false positives. Parents will assume the worst case scenario and the baby could be born perfectly healthy. Another mindset of many parents, especially those who are religious, believe they are only given what they can handle and would rather not know of any issues in advance since they do not approve of abortions anyway.

Genetics has become a very important topic of discussion in the healthcare field. There are more and more diseases being linked to certain genes in the DNA. Carrier: Untangling the danger in my DNA, by Bonnie J. Rough, is one example of the modern problems people have to deal with in regards to genetics and genetic testing. The author writes about the problems she faced. She had some very difficult decisions about her possible offspring as well as herself. Rough writes about her struggle with deciding if she should get a genetic test for a gene that causes a disease that has been passed on through her families for generations. The reader also learns about her and her husband’s experience of getting pregnant and the steps they took to try

The purpose of the document is to explain the benefits of prenatal genetic counselling, procedures and tests used to find genetic abnormalities, and what to do with the information received through genetic counseling.

All women should be offered genetic testing during child-bearing years. It may be done before pregnancy or during pregnancy.

“When families get a diagnosis prenatally, they use the words ‘shock’, ‘sadness’, ‘disbelief’”, says Sarah Cullen of the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress. “ You feel like like the rug is pulled out from under you. You feel very heavy. You feel very, very alone” (Szabo 1). When parents receive the results of their prenatal test, many do not know what to do. They can feel very overwhelmed, because their baby is unhealthy and there may be nothing that they can do about it. Often the doctor does not know what to do either, because there may not be a cure for the disease.This kind of news alone is agonizing for parents. Mothers should not have genetic testing done to see if their baby has diseases because it causes unnecessary anxiety for the parents, tests may not always be accurate, and it is unethical.

United States genetic centers now offer DNA tests for over 30 or 40 of the more commonly inherited disorders. Those including cystic fibrosis, susceptibility to breast cancer, X syndrome, Huntington’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and many other various disorders (Golden). Also, with recent developments, couples are able to have a pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This procedure allows the testing of genetic disorders before germination. It consists of “petri-dish” testing of sperm and egg cells donated by the soon to be parents. This procedure prevents the idea of abortion, for if genetic problems occur, you are not destroying a fetus, but simple flushing away embryo cells.

Therefore, planned pregnancy is a huge key factor in preventing birth defects, because often times birth defects develop even before women might know they are pregnant. Because women don’t know they are pregnant, they may consume alcohol, causing harm to their babies. Smoking causes harm to infants before, during, and after pregnancies. Even in the womb nicotine, carbon monoxide, and many other poisons women inhale from cigarettes are carried through their bloodstream. Smoking while pregnant causes many developmental issues including birth defects, lung problems, stunted growth, increase in babies heart rates, low birth weight, or result in stillbirths. However, there are many other agents known to cause these developmental defects. For example, drugs and other medications such as; thalidomide, isotretinoin, valproic acid, methotrexate, and mycophenolate mofetil are also known to cause the same birth defects (Simeone, et al., 2015). Putting healthy supplements, unlike these types of drugs into individuals systems when pregnant can help prevent infant

Prenatal testing is used to help understand the health and state of an unborn child concerning any birth defects or any other health concerns to help families prepare for the child before it is born. Many physicians and families use prenatal testing in order to help determine whether or not a mother will want to continue with a pregnancy if there is “fetal impairment (that) is detected” (1650). This would then allow for the mother to make a selective abortion. While some information is helpful concerning the health state of the unborn child, there needs to be a distinction between acute injury and chronic disability. However, Asch reiterates that the terms “such as ‘heath,’ ‘normality,’ and ‘disability,’ are not clear” terms and that they vary

Although highly controversial, I find germline editing extremely interesting. Just the thought of removing a gene from an embryo is fascinating. In the article they used an enzyme called CRISPR/Cas9 as their scissors in order to cut out the faulty gene, which could’ve lead to heart failure. This genetic editing could potentially save thousands, perhaps millions of people from heart problems. When injected with the CRISPR/Cas9, a RNA strand to direct the cut, and an added piece of DNA to help repair the cell. During this process something interesting happened. The embryo rejected the added DNA and healed itself using the healthy copy of its mother’s DNA. This posed many questions for me. One of the major questions I had was, are designer babies possible? Can someone choose what features their child gets? By continuing my research into this topic I found out that although it would be extremely difficult there is a slight chance that designer babies are possible. Although this possibility is very small and would take

R. (2011). Newborn screening: ethical, legal, and social implications. Annual Review Of Nursing Research, 29113-132. doi:10.1891/0739-6686.29.113

In recent years, fetal gene sequencing has been a controversial topic of debate for various reasons. This sequencing gives parents their unborn child’s full genetic complex during pregnancy. Meaning, parents will know in advance the physical traits, any possible disease development, or other complications. Patient care for future generations can be more accurate and efficient with the use of the scanning. There are conflicts between parents on the beliefs over this type of testing. Due to the immorality of obsessive parental influence, fetal scanning should only be used for medical illness prediction.

The next technique routinely performed for prenatal diagnosis is amniocentesis. A long needle is inserted into the mother’s uterus to withdraw a sample of amniotic fluid containing cells shed by the fetus. The cells are cultured and analyzed for chromosome abnormalities. Despite the lengthy time in obtaining results because the cells need to be cultured, this method has become widely accepted as a safe and accurate way to determine genetic disorders.

Prenatal care is widely accepted as an important element in improving pregnancy outcome. (Gorrie, McKinney, Murray, 1998). Prenatal care is defined as care of a pregnant woman during the time in the maternity cycle that begins with conception and ends with the onset of labor. A medical, surgical, gynecologic, obstretic, social and family history is taken (Mosby's Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary, 1998). It is important for a pregnant woman as well as our society to know that everything that you do has an effect on your baby. Because so many women opt not to receive the benefits of prenatal care, our society sees the ramification, which include a variety of complications primarily