5 June 2008

THE HAGUE - The Dutch parliament is due to convene an emergency meeting Thursday to debate whether Dutch hospitals may screen embryos resulting from IVF treatment for certain genetic diseases, reports said Wednesday.

After screening, only those embryos free of the gene that may later cause a person to develop the disease will be implanted in the uterus.

The emergency meeting follows after members of the smallest coalition party Christian Union demanded last week that Dutch deputy minister of health Jet Bussemaker (Labour) recall her letter to parliament of 26 May, which said the government supported extending the list of genetic diseases for which patients could request embryo screening.

The AZM hospital, however, has decided to proceed with the screening. After receiving the letter of approval from the deputy prime health minister, the hospital has immediately contacted the five patients it has on its waiting list for years.

"We cannot promise our patients to help them on Monday and call them back on Thursday, saying that the government has changed its mind," Joep Geraedts, head of the clinical genetics department said.

"That would be neither humane nor ethical."

The importance of testing
In the last 10 years, only the AZM hospital, a teaching hospital affiliated with the University of Maastricht in the southern Netherlands, is allowed to perform so-called pre-implantation genetic diagnostics (PGD).

PGD enables people who are carriers of serious genetic diseases to start IVF treatment. The resultant embryos are subsequently screened for the genetic diseases.

Only embryos that do not carry the genes responsible for these particular diseases are implanted in the womb.

So far, PGD has been allowed only for serious diseases such as Huntington's disease, a neurological disorder characterised by abnormal body movements, and Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

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