Options for affected families

Families that are affected by an inherited condition may decide that they want to avoid passing on the condition to their children.

These reproductive decisions are faced by many families who have often had experience of family members being affected by an inherited condition.

The options that are available to people that want to avoid passing on a genetic condition are:

- not having children;
-  adopting;
- using donor sperm or eggs instead of using the affected person’s own gametes;
- natural conception and hoping that the child is unaffected.

People are increasingly taking advantage of genetic testing to avoid passing on an inherited condition to their children. For people that choose to take advantage of these techniques there are two further options:

- natural conception and genetic testing of the fetus with an option of termination if the child is affected (prenatal diagnosis);
-  in vitro fertilisation and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), replacing only unaffected embryos.
 

Next : PGD for inherited cancer