Prenatal Testing

Prenatal testing’s and everything that surrounds them

Some congenital defects can be inherited from parents; others may be the result of an intrauterine infection or exposure to any substance during the pregnancy, such as drugs or alcohol. Most often, the defect is unknown. Most babies with congenital defects have born from parents who have no risk factor. During the process of having a child,parental DNA mix. In the moment in where DNAs are mixed, the fetus can suffer several errors like cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, hemophilia and many others. The importance of detecting these errors at time is discovered through prenatal testing’s. During your pregnancy your doctor will offer a series of routine prenatal tests, such as ultrasound, blood test and check if you are immune to rubellaand varicella. Others prenatal tests, however, are based on whether it is necessary and you want, for example the amniocentesis and the chorionic villi testing. Contemporary humanity is witnessing and protagonist of the development of science and we are all actors in a social process of knowledge which is expected to contribute to the development of society.

Some areas such as religion,psychology, sociology and politics can be affected by the prenatal tests. In countries where there are differences between social classes and services are private health insurance or rely on, no access is granted to all members of society, so that pregnant women with more resources are more likely to receive prenatal diagnosis. When this happens, it violates the principle of justice, not having equityin the distribution of the service offered. In Cuba, this is not a problem because all pregnant women regardless of their cultural or social, are guaranteed access to prenatal diagnostic services, whose costs are fully subsidized by the state. If genetic testing is done before marriage may present many ethical problems, including involvement of privacy and possible stigmatization, thennon-compliance with the principle of beneficence. Pre-symptomatic genetic studies can be used to exchange information before making the decision to have offspring. There are examples of application of these studies to identify carriers of the disease in populations there Sachs Ashkenazy Jews, so that knowledge of carrier status streamlines the process of genetic counseling. Should know if they are carriersor not marriage can be prevented (an option that Ashkenazy Jews seem to prefer) or increase the performance of prenatal diagnosis and therefore can achieve lower birth of affected individuals.
There are many couples who, even after the diagnosis of a genetic disease in offspring, reject the pregnancy interruption as a therapeutic option on moral, ethical or religious grounds. Once you know thepresence of disease in the fetus, parents can receive psychological support during pregnancy to help them deal with the problem after birth. Prenatal testing play an important role for politics, some conservative parties use the rejection of this test to obtain more votes from religious and old mentality point of view.

Prenatal tests have been made for more than three decades by means ofultrasound. This method is considered “invasive” and its application is straightforward. On the other hand, supports for the performance of other techniques such as extraction of amniotic fluid (amniocentesis) or obtaining a small fragment of the placenta (chorionic villus sampling) in which fetal cells are directly studied. These methods are called “invasive” and can cause complications such aspregnancy loss in approximately 0.5% of patients.
Amniocentesis involves removing a sample of amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus in the uterus for testing. It takes place between weeks 15 and 20 of pregnancy. This test is carried out with the aim of knowing if the baby has a chromosomal or genetic birth defect. These are the main abnormalities that this procedure can detect: Down syndrome,...