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 Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Margaux MacColl, The San Francisco Standard | 09.17.2025
Designer babies are coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.
Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi in 2020, when he was just 20, got its start analyzing genomes to weigh a person’s risk of everything from cancer to ADHD...
By Auriane Polge, Science & Vie [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 09.19.2025
L’idée de pouvoir choisir certaines caractéristiques de son futur enfant a longtemps relevé de la science-fiction ou du débat éthique. Aujourd’hui, les technologies de séquençage et les algorithmes d’analyse génétique repoussent les limites de ce qui semblait encore impossible. Au croisement...
By Charmayne Allison, ABC News | 09.21.2025
It has been seven years since Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui made an announcement that shocked the world's scientists.
He had made the world's first gene-edited babies.
Through rewriting DNA in twin girls' embryos, the man who would later be dubbed...