Acceptable Applications of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Among Israeli PGD Users

The use of PGD technology to select against genetic disorders and traits is increasing. Although PGD may eliminate some of the obstacles related to conservative options of prenatal diagnosis, it can raise personal, social and moral questions. Ethical issues concerning the justified uses of PGD are a subject of ongoing debate among medical and bioethical communities. Although attitudes toward the acceptable uses of PGD were evaluated among population groups worldwide, bioethics councils were criticized for ignoring public perspectives. In the last decade PGD has been widely used in Israel. The ethical guidelines were created solely by medical-bioethics experts and, some felt, totally isolated from public opinions. Semi-structured in-depth interviews of 37 users (carriers of autosomal recessive, dominant and X-linked disorders, and HLA-matching) were performed. The interviews explored attitudes toward ethical and sociological aspects of PGD. The overall results of this study show highly favorable attitudes of Israeli PGD users toward medical applications. Furthermore, our subjects demonstrate a more permissive stand toward the controversial application of social sex selection albeit with strong objection to esthetic means of selection. PGD users are coping with both genetic disease and load of the PGD procedure. Taking into consideration their opinion is important since it reflects the gains and burdens of these procedures alongside the demand for future optional services. Their attitudes should play an important role in the professional discussion concerning the justified uses of PGD and should significantly influence the design of policy making in this field.