Jewish Perspectives on the Use of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis

The desire to have healthy and happy children is the most basic parental instinct. A parent's moral obligation to care for the child extends before the moment of birth back to the point of conception. In classical Jewish tradition, the Talmud itself offers pregnant women advice on how to improve the well-being of their offspring, such as eating parsley in order to have handsome children, drinking wine in order to bear healthy children, or eating coriander to have especially plump children. We stand on the cusp of a new era today because an explosion of genetic knowledge in recent years has provided us the ability to pursue certain health and wellness advantages even before pregnancy has begun. Technology called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) allows parents to screen the DNA of embryos fertilized in vitro and to implant only those embryos that match the parents' desired genetic makeup. This may include selecting only embryos guaranteed not to have a particular genetic disease, only embryos of one particular gender, or eventually even only embryos with a predisposition for certain traits such as height, eye color, or enhanced memory.