By Dave Andrusko
I’ve been promising to get to this all week. Since I do not have time to do justice to “The Reckless, Profitable Elimination of Down Syndrome,” by Mark W. Leach, fortunately you can read his essay online.
As we have written several times, there is a new blood test from Sequenom, a San Diego–based testing company, that allows the mother to know earlier in her pregnancy (perhaps as soon as ten weeks) that her child may have Down syndrome. Mr. Leach makes a very, very important point right out of the box about one of the primary selling points.
It is NOT true, as accounts routinely insist, that the test is “safer.” Leach explains how misleading the “safety” claim is on a number of grounds.
For example, there already exist safe blood tests “though less accurate in assessing a fetus’s likelihood of having Down syndrome.”
What the new test [dubbed MaterniT21] does is identify fetal DNA in a sample of the mother’s blood and sequence it. But as Leach points out
The only way to know for certain whether a pregnancy is positive for Down syndrome, even after receiving a MaterniT21 result, is through invasive testing, usually an amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS). Because invasive testing involves inserting a needle into the womb, it has a risk of miscarriage. MaterniT21 does not make invasive testing any safer—if anything, it might increase the risk.
Moreover, the fact that the test can be performed earlier is another cause for concern, Leach points out.
MaterniT21 can be performed any time from ten weeks forward in a pregnancy. In the research study, half of the samples were from the second trimester, but the test is offered earlier in the pregnancy specifically because it allows for earlier termination. Matthew Rabinowitz is CEO of Gene Security Network, a company developing its own noninvasive prenatal test for Down syndrome. Commenting on Sequenom’s new test, he clinically and candidly stated, “If a couple finds an abnormality, and chooses to terminate the pregnancy, it’s better to do it earlier.” Considering that the majority of women currently receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome do opt to terminate, Sequenom’s new test is definitively not safer for the fetus.
This prompts Leach to observe
“For this reason, Sequenom’s product name for the test is rather Orwellian. ‘MaterniT21’ recognizes that the test is for a mother, but provides the opportunity for most women to end their maternal status through abortion.”
Please take ten minutes to read “The Reckless, Profitable Elimination of Down Syndrome” at www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/11/4240?printerfriendly=true
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