9. Do You Really Want To Know Your Baby’s Genetics? New prenatal testing will bring anxiety and dilemmas

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/09/prenatal_genetic_testing_of_entire_fetal_genome_what_is_a_healthy_baby_anyway_.html

A medical ethicist and writer in New York Harriet A. Washington writes an informative and persuasive essay on september 16th, for parents; mainly to pregnant women. She talk about a new creative development, with the goal to find out the fetus genetics and if the baby will be healthy. Washington continues her article to show that not only there is one place with this new research but also there are two. She explains the process that the treatment requires, needing maternal blood, and having to determine the parents genomes. Washington goes on to explain in a very motherly tone, that it is very helpful to know weather the baby will have disorders, she says very confident that the sooner the doctors know, the better it is to treat. She doesn't forget to mention the riskyness of these treatment, also listed many cases in which people said something would go wrong with Males with disorder XYY, but they ended up being completely normal. Washington also makes a very important questions to all those reading, "What can we do with the information?" She emphasizes on this topic for a whole paragraph, telling readers that its worse to leave the information behind after knowing. The very straight forward she asks if abortion was an option to some parents; "Which disorders justify abortion?" The last couple of paragraph Washington also states that even though, today people who have some kind of disorder live amongst others and are doing fine, when she says this she is also completing and putting her main idea all together in one.

Washington in this essay wants to inform the audience about a new technological advance that medicine has had though out the years, and showing that in about 5 years people will be able to apply these on themselves, but she doesn't stop there. She also write this essay to open the eyes of many readers asking them questions, that will make them think weather the should or shouldn't find out their babies genetics. She shows evidence to good and bad, and has a very stable view to both, but even so, when ending her essay she states "Whole-genome fetal sequencing is still years away from being used in the real world. It's a good thing, as we have a lot to sort out before then." showing that even though she's stable, she still has a strong will for parents to not find out their fetus genetics.