Since 2011, reproductive medicine has seen how society has positively valued the scientific breakthrough of creating life in embryology laboratories and thus solving sterility problems. This appreciation was reflected in the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine to Dr. Edwards, for the birth of Louise Brown, the first person to be born thanks to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).
The consequences of hereditary diseases
Although great technical advances have been made in Assisted Reproduction, research continues in the field of life and today “it is possible for couples carrying hereditary diseases to have healthy children”. Nowadays, in the embryology laboratory it is possible to select those embryos that will not suffer from the genetic alteration that would cause serious and degenerative diseases.
Since 1990, sex selection (sexing) has been allowed, for medical reasons, to embryos before implantation, studying the DNA by means of Preimplantational Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and avoiding the transmission of the disease that only males would suffer.
In recent years, the demand for these treatments has been on the rise, as awareness of them has become more widespread. Currently, specialized clinics are visited by couples who have had implantation failures in in vitro fertilization treatments, who have had repeated miscarriages or who are carriers of serious hereditary diseases and know that by performing PGD it is possible to obtain healthy children.