SAN JOSE, Calif. - Raising the prospect of a world without birth defects, a Stanford-created blood test that can detect Down syndrome and two other major genetic defects very early in a woman's pregnancy will be available next week.
The simple blood test spares women the risk and heartache of later and more invasive tests like amniocentesis. But it has startling social implications - heralding a not-distant future when many fetal traits, from deadly disease to hair color, are known promptly after conception when abortion is safer and simpler.
The $1,200 test, which analyzes fetal DNA in a mother who is 10 weeks pregnant, is being offered to doctors Thursday by Verinata Health, a biotechnology company in Redwood City, Calif. It licensed a technique designed by Stanford biophysicist Stephen Quake.
"It's a game changer," said Stanford University law professor Hank Greely, who studies the legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies. The controversy over abortion "is about to be hit by a tsunami of new science."
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There are two converging trends, Greely said. "We've got politicians running for president who are really trying to whack away at reproductive rights at a time when the science is about to vastly expand the information that parents have about their fetus."
A similar test is already available from the San Diego company Sequenom, and at least two other San Francisco Bay area companies plan to offer noninvasive prenatal genetic testing.
The market is huge: 4.5 million U.S. births a year, of which an estimated 750,000 are "high risk," due to age or family history. The test's effectiveness was reported last week in the journal of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
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