Biology 6.11-Inherited Disorders+Embryo screening

• Inherited disorders are a group of conditions that are caused by faulty genes and passed on in alleles from a person's parents.
• Polydactyly is condition where a person is born with extra fingers or extra toes (doesn't cause any other problems.)
• Polydactyly is caused by a dominant allele.
• Cystic Fibrosis is a recessive condition and a disorder of the cell membrane.
• Cystic Fibrosis causes sticky mucus to build up in parts of the body, including the lungs and pancreas.
• Cystic Fibrosis causes respiratory issues (due to the sticky mucus), digestive problems and reproductive issues as well.
• Some people are carriers of Cystic Fibrosis and therefore do not have the condition itself but carry a copy of the allele.
• IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) is where egg cells are fertilised by sperm cells in a lab and once it grows into an embryo, it is placed back into the woman's uterus lining.
• One of the cells of the embryo produced from IVF has its genes looked at to see if it is carrying a genetic disorder- this is called embryo screening.
• After embryo screening, if alleles that could cause a disorder are found, the parents and doctors can choose to discard the embryo and use a different one instead.
• An advantage of embryo screening is that it helps reduce the overall amount of suffering as there will be less people with health problems.
• Another advantage of embryo screening is that it saves money on healthcare as treating genetic disorders is expensive.
• A disadvantage of embryo screening is that it implies that people with genetic disorders are less desirable and worthy of life (increases prejudice).
• Another disadvantage of embryo screening is that it can cause future screening for other traits such as eye-colour or gender (and cause abortions of healthy embryos)-however, there are laws to prevent this.