The National Centre for Medical Genetics stopped referring patients abroad for embryonic genetic screening in 2006 after receiving legal advice that the referrals could be unconstitutional.
According to the Irish Times, staff at the Centre, which is based at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin, had to cease direct referrals for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), after they were told that the procedure could be unconstitutional as it “inevitably and necessarily involves the destruction of human embryos”.
PGD is used in conjunction with IVF to screen embryos for genetic disorders. It is a form of eugenics. Only those embryos diagnosed as free of a specific disorder are implanted into a woman to try to achieve a pregnancy.
The embryos that are not implanted in the woman are destroyed.
The Centre is under the governance of the hospital, which is chaired by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Staff say the current chairman, Dr Diarmuid Martin, who has been in place since 2004, has never intervened in the Centre’s work despite it being sharply at variance with a Catholic ethos.
The Centre only stopped referring women abroad for PGD in 2006, after a request for the HSE to cover the cost of the procedure prompted the hospital to receive legal advice from barrister Shane Murphy.
Mr Murphy reviewed documentation from Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital in London, a leader in the field, and came to the conclusion that PGD “inevitably and necessarily involves the destruction of human embryos”.
The destruction of embryos in this process would be unlawful in Ireland and would appear to involve a violation of Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution on the right to life, he advised.
Mr Murphy said the Centre could reduce the risk of liability by ensuring that staff did not write referral letters for patients to centres providing PGD in other countries. However, they could provide basic information to patients about the nature of a genetic disorder. This should state that the service is not available in the Republic.
However, since Mr Murphy made his assessment, a 2009 Supreme Court case , Roche V Roche, found that pre-implantation embryos are not considered “the unborn” under the constitution.
Since then, The Health Products Regulatory Authority, licensed two private clinics, the Beacon Care Fertility clinic and Cork Fertility Centre to sample eggs and embryos for the purpose of carrying out PGD. “Currently, these tests are carried out at specialised laboratories located outside Ireland,” it stated.
A spokeswoman for Crumlin said the genetic centre does not offer a PGD service, but a consultant geneticist may “assist” with referring patients abroad “where appropriate”. “The hospital is not funded to provide a pre-implantation genetic diagnosis service,” she added.