A couple carrying the mutant allele for Huntington's disease (an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder) is considering Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) to select embryos free of the disease-causing allele prior to implantation.
Which of the following represents an ethical concern directly associated with this genetic technology?
The micromanipulation required to biopsy a single cell from the blastocyst can occasionally damage the embryonic tissue, reducing the chance of a successful pregnancy.
Choosing which embryos to implant based on genetic status may reinforce discriminatory social attitudes toward individuals living with late-onset inherited disorders.
Single-cell PCR amplification of the target gene is highly sensitive to contamination and can result in diagnostic errors such as allele dropout.
Providing PGD services requires substantial capital funding to establish cleanroom laboratories and purchase high-throughput sequencing platforms.
97 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Biology 5.1 Inheritance, covering 5.1.1 The genome, 5.1.2 Environment and phenotype, 5.1.3 Variants and mutations, 5.1.4 How genetic variants influence phenotype, 5.1.5 Asexual and sexual reproduction, 5.1.6 Haploid and diploid, 5.1.7 Meiotic cell division, 5.1.8 Single gene inheritance, 5.1.9 Predicting single gene crosses, 5.1.10 Sex determination, 5.1.11 Multiple gene inheritance, and 5.1.12 Development of our understanding of genetics. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.