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Choosing embryos: ethical complexity and relational autonomy in staff accounts of PGD

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 05:23 authored by Kathryn Ehrich, Clare Williams, Bobbie FarsidesBobbie Farsides, Jane Sandall, Rosamund Scott
The technique of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is commonly explained as a way of checking the genes of embryos produced by IVF for serious genetic diseases. However, complex accounts of this technique emerged during ethics discussion groups held for PGD staff. These form part of a study exploring the social processes, meanings and institutions that frame and produce ‘ethical problems’ for practitioners, scientists and others working in the specialty of PGD in the UK. Two ‘grey areas’ raised by staff are discussed in terms of how far staff are, or in the future may be, able to support autonomous choices of women/couples: accepting ‘carrier’ embryos within the goal of creating a ‘healthy’ child; and sex selection of embryos for social reasons. These grey areas challenged the staff's resolve to offer individual informed choice, in the face of their awareness of possible collective social effects that might ensue from individual choices. We therefore argue that these new forms of choice pose a challenge to conventional models of individual autonomy used in UK genetic and reproductive counselling, and that ‘relational autonomy’ may be a more suitable ethical model to describe the ethical principles being drawn on by staff working in this area.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Sociology of Health and Illness

ISSN

0141-9889

Publisher

Wiley

Issue

7

Volume

29

Page range

1091-1106

Department affiliated with

  • BSMS Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-03-03

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