Non-medical applications of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis: Ethical issues.

Non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) is becoming increasingly important and its application in prenatal diagnosis is reaching consensus in the scientific research community. We discuss the opportunities and ethics of non-invasive prenatal testing for non-medical purposes, including forensic genetics. A number of ethical issues arise from non-medical applications of NIPD, such as sex determination and paternity testing in earlier gestational age and subsequent offspring selection. NIPD provides a source of information about the genetic make-up of the foetus, avoiding the small but significant risk of pregnancy loss related to invasive testing such as amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling. NIPD is characterized by: safety, early detection and easy sampling. These features of NIPD increase the opportunity of prenatal testing also for non-medical reasons. Even if NIPD can be qualified as a good practice prenatal diagnosis tout court remains a topic of ethical judgements. The non-medical use of NIPD will benefit from an informed and open debate involving both pregnant women and physicians.