Pre-implantation genetic diagnostic procedures: from scientific and technical advances to bioethical implications

Abstract

Trying to determine if the human embryo is a person, is one of the questions to which philosophical, bioethical and biological aspects will come together, the same ones that necessarily disagree from their particular point of view; For this reason, a brief review of the various approaches is carried out applying the principles of philosophical anthropology and metaphysics at all stages of human life. From these principles it is proposed to build or build a bioethics that is objective, and that solves the cases and actions that have to do with human life and its nature.

On this issue there is a first emotional posture that makes us all be in favor of life and in defense of embryos, but to build an ethical system we cannot rely on mere feeling but raise it to the reflexive category and share the prescription of Diego Gracia, who points out that the feeling without reflection is blind and that the reflection without feeling is born dead, so when there are morals based on a system of strongly emotional values, it must be subjected to the control of reason, considering the means and ends . This is what is called the ethics of responsibility that must prevail at the dawn, of the solstice and the decline of life.

Post-genomic modernity opens the door to wonderful promises about the real possibility of manipulating in the diagnostic and even therapeutic perspective the rudimentary "human being" in the process of formation. From 1953 to today there have been spectacular scientific and technological conquests around the structure and function of DNA (genomic sciences): Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPT), CRISPER / Cas9 (Lejeune, 1993)