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This is the first story in a two-part series on fetal DNA testing and the ethical issues raised by it. Please click here for part two.
The results of the blood test revealed only a risk, but when she saw them, she still threw up. Now she had to find out for sure.
So she lay on her back at a doctor's office, praying, comforted by her Christian faith and her mother at her side, while a needle was slipped into her belly.
Erin Witkowski of Port Jervis, N.Y., was going to find out if the baby she was carrying had Down syndrome.
For years, many women have gone through an experience like hers: a blood or ultrasound test that indicates a heightened risk of the syndrome, followed by a medical procedure to make a firm diagnosis by capturing DNA from the fetus.
Usually it's the needle procedure Witkowski had, called amniocentesis, done almost four months or more into the pregnancy. Sometimes it's an earlier test called CVS, or chorionic villus sampling, which collects a bit of tissue from the...