Aggregated News

Scientists can now sequence the entire genome of a fetus from samples of a pregnant woman’s blood, several recent studies have shown. It will come as no surprise that bioethicists are plenty interested in these developments and the benefits and thorny issues they will raise.

The technology -- and the issues -- are discussed at length in a commentary this week in the journal Nature Medicine by Diana Bianchi of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center.

Because a pregnant woman's blood carries pieces of fetal DNA, researchers can devise tests to tell with a high degree of certainty whether the fetus carries extra chromosomes (as an extra chromosome 21 in Down syndrome, for example). They can also test for versions of genes that cause or raise the risk for a disease, potentially screening for a whole slew of genetic disorders in one fell swoop.

And as geneticists learn more about the genetics behind traits such as eye color or hair color, these noninvasive fetal tests will be to pick up on those characteristics as well.

“Prenatal genetic...