A new national strategy for screening for Down syndrome in Denmark has halved the number of Down Syndrome births and led to a 30% increase in infants diagnosed with the condition. The Danish National Board of Health issued guidelines for prenatal screening and diagnosis for Down Syndrome in 2004; these guidelines (from Science Daily)
included the offer of a combined test for Down Syndrome (based on combination of maternal age, plus serum and nuchal screening) in the first trimester. This test gave women a risk assessment for Down Syndrome at an early stage in the pregnancy. Women whose risk was higher …read more

I’ve a couple of ideas for posts about topics like prenatal genetic testing, vaccines and more about vaccines, gestation and future health problems and the like but since it’s getting later in the evening (out here on the East Coast) I’m just going to reference an article from no less august a body than the Style section of last Sunday’s New York Times and specifically an article on how the economic crisis is affecting teens whose parents have never been able to say, no, you don’t need more Abercrombie. Given the near-constant talk about the “cost” of raising a special …read more

The February 15th issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics is devoted to children and genetics. My friend Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei of Eye on DNA highlights articles that, in various ways, are relevant in thinking about a genetic test for autism: Waiving informed consent in newborn screening research; on the ethical implications of including children in a large biobank for genetic-epidemiologic research; on the experiences of young persons regarding predictive genetic testing for Huntington disease (HD) and familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP); and on whether genetic testing for BRCA1/2 should be permitted for minors?.
What will it mean for families and relatives …read more