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Genetic knowledge has played a direct role in pregnancy for more than 50 years, since the first use of amniocentesis to extract amniotic fluid containing fetal cells and DNA for analysis. Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT)—which is significantly cheaper than amniocentesis and, requiring only a blood draw, can be done earlier in pregnancy—started a decade ago and is now common. NIPT will only become better, providing more-accurate information on risk for thousands of rare genetic conditions and dozens of more-common diseases. It’s just one of the technologies poised to transform pregnancy over the coming decades.
Today, bad news from prenatal testing leaves would-be parents with two options: terminate the pregnancy or prepare for the birth of an ill or at-risk child. For over 30 years, parents have been able to avoid this dilemma by turning to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This procedure starts with in vitro fertilization ...
