Embryo Pre-Implantation

When conception naturally occurs, sperm fertilises the egg inside of woman’s body, however the IVF procedure requires fertilisation of the egg and sperm and first few days of embryo development occur outside the body in a test tube or Petri dish, existing in maintained and manipulated in conditions in a laboratory. ‘In-vitro’ is Latin for ‘in a glass’ which is where the egg and sperm is placed together. For IVF to occur, the ovaries from the mother (or the egg donor) are induced to release more eggs by the use of hormonal drugs. These embryos go through a process to find out which ones have the greatest development potential and are then selected for implantation. After fertilisation, the embryo is checked and when it is 3-5 days old it will be placed into the uterus and hopefully the woman will become pregnant.

Using the

Through the process of PGD, embryos that are affected by genetic diseases will lead to them being destroyed which are viewed by some as unethical and as if it is disposing of what could be classified as a “human” and ending a life. This is also believed to be “playing God”. Others believe that destroying embryos is ethically better than terminating pregnancies by testing a fetus that already planted in the woman’s uterus. Other’s a willing to accept destroyed embryos if these embryos are affected which genetic conditions that are severely disabling or would be fatal within a few years after birth, but will not accept milder conditions or ones happening later in life. People also view PGD and IVF as a cause for designer babies, gender imbalance in populations and find it difficult to classify which diseases are counted as ‘serious enough’. On the other hand, there are obvious benefits such as successful pregnancies producing children without genetic disorders which results in it being a socio-scientific