Chiara (31): “I would advise PGD to everybody who is not sure whether a naturally conceived child would be healthy.”

My husband and I wanted a baby, a healthy baby to bring us joy. My own genetic material sadly contains a deposition for Chorea Huntington that will be inherited with a risk of 50 per cent. For nothing in the world I could live knowing that my genes were the cause of my daughter's or son's pain. Our last chance to make our deepest wish come true was the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This technical method made our dream possible. We are so thankful that Susan, who will be celebrating her third birthday in a week, is genetically healthy. I would advise PGD to everybody who is not sure whether a naturally conceived child would be healthy.
PGD is a painless surgery and I really appreciate it. Although I was really afraid of the operation first, the result is just fantastic!

Doctor Winter explains PGD:

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a technical method which can test embryos in the laboratory for specific genetic or chromosomal disorders. Hereby, egg cells get extracted. Then, they get fertilized in a petri dish. In that way several embryos are being created. Now, a single cell gets removed from every embryo and then genetically analysed to find a healthy specimen which is not affected by a genetic disease. This embryo will be implanted in the egg cell.
Of course, this application requires previous examination and analysis to reduce the risk of unforeseen consequences for the mother and the embryo.

Justus (14): "They call me a 'monster'."
 
PGD is the reason why I am really unhappy: I am one of those "designer babies”. This is why some people think I'm some kind of "monster“, raising a claim to be special or better than them. But that's not true! My parents wanted to have a happy and healthy child but it proved to be completely wrong. What I feel now is isolation, discrimination and separation. Last week, a “normal” child offended me in school and all the others laughed loudly. No one cares about how I feel. They prefer making fun of me instead of realizing how cruel they behave and what that does to me. They are the “real monsters“, and I am not one of them. However, this is not the first time I have to face such insults. My parents and I moved from London to Liverpool until we finally ended up in a small village near Georgetown. Due to globalisation, everyone is connected and every single time I was recognized on the internet.  In a small town like the one I live in such information spreads in very little time.

Further deaths caused by genetically modified food!

In our days genetically modified food is pervasive. Plants and their fruits need to look delicious and healthy, have to contain lots of vitamins and carry a constantly increasing high yield. But is GM-Food a blessing or a curse? For all the advocates genetically modified food seems to be the one and only way to help solve the problem of global hunger crisis as well as the magic bullet from god to solve several diseases like diabetes. It is true that GM-plants can be modified and therefore be resistant against pest, which indirectly even protects the environment. However, it does not mean that genetic engineering does not include a certain amount of risk.

In London, a 29 years old woman died after having eaten genetically modified food. Assuming that she would eat common, naturally bred food, her body reacted with an allergic shock. Her heart stopped beating and the assistance arrived too late.
Fatally, the tragic occurrence could have been avoided through simply informing her about the origin of the food. She did not even know that she was eating genetically modified food and this is no individual case.

Just a few weeks ago, a German man died of pancreatic cancer, which was caused by the regularly ingestion of genetically modified food. News of people who died because they have eaten genetically modified food as a central issue can be seen over and over again. Actually, one can see a trend: In these regions, where genetically modified food circulates, the number of people with food-related cancer, adiposity and diabetes has risen extremely.
This is exactly the core of the matter. Long- term consequences have not been studied yet, so there is no knowledge about what may be happening in future times. Not only allergies could worsen and increase, it is also possible to create new, much more severe diseases leading to recurrence of fatal casualties.

Furthermore, one has to face another problem: Even though there is a lot of space between usual farms and GM-food producing farms on purpose to prevent a cross breeding, there is no such thing like a perfect solution. The risk of a blending of genes is still present, because the seeds persist in the ground and stay germinable for a long time.
The problem for the environment is the cross breeding between those unrecognized plants and naturally growing plants. One can fall ill or even die after having eaten ordinarily looking food. The estimated number of unreported cases, in which people died because of the consumption of those often irreconcilable crops, is probably of dizzy height.