The new German law makes such tests a crime. The same is true of tests for the genes that strongly predispose women to breast cancer. As genetics advances, more such late-onset conditions will become detectable prenatally.
What could be the thinking behind such a law? One might take the view that 40 years of life before the onset of Huntington’s disease or breast cancer is better than no life at all. But if we take that into account, should we not also take into consideration the life of the child who the parents would have had, if they had been able to use prenatal diagnosis and be sure of having a child who does not carry the gene for the disease? Surely that child has better life prospects. When we have a choice between lives with such different prospects — and can make the choice before the embryo or fetus has any awareness at all — shouldn’t we be able to choose the child with the better prospects?
It is not surprising that questions about genetic tests should receive special attention in Germany, given the national imperative of avoiding any repetition of the crimes of the Nazi era. But, in their laudable desire to distance themselves as much as possible from those atrocities, Germany’s legislators have enacted a law that makes it a crime to use modern science to avoid undoubted human tragedies. That is an absurd outcome. The pendulum has swung too far.
Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and a laureate professor at the University of Melbourne.
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