European Rights Court Raps Italy on Embryo Screening
By Gilbert Reilhac,
Reuters
| 08. 28. 2012
(Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that Italy violated the rights of a couple carrying cystic fibrosis by preventing them from screening in vitro fertilization (IVF)embryos to avoid giving the disease to any future children.The ruling, which can be appealed, puts pressure on Italy to change its law and several Italian politicians renewed their calls for a change in the laws on assisted reproduction.
The Strasbourg-based court ordered the Italian government to pay the couple 17,500 euros ($21,900) in damages and expenses.
Under Italian law the only alternative for the couple was to conceive a child and abort the fetus if it was found to have cystic fibrosis, which they have already done once.
The couple found out that they were carriers of the disease after their first child was born with it. They want to have a second child by IVF so that the embryo can be screened and aborted if it also has cystic fibrosis.
They brought the case before the European court because predominantly Catholic Italy is, together with Austria and...
Related Articles
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...
By Harold Brubaker, The Philadelphia Inquirer | 04.04.2024
Acompany started by University of Pennsylvania scientist Jim Wilson has received FDA approval to test a form of gene editing in infants for the first time in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The Plymouth Meeting company, iECURE, is...
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born...
By Nick Paul Taylor, BioSpace | 03.14.2024
A U.K. watchdog balked at the cost-effectiveness of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ CRISPR-based sickle cell disease therapy Thursday, recommending against funding the treatment unless uncertainties can be cleared up satisfactorily.
The U.K. became the first country to authorize Vertex’s Casgevy (exagamglogene...