12-16-2014, 09:36 AM
What do you say to people who get abortions when they're told about children's birth defects that are the results of flawed pre-natal tests?
Quote:On that spring day in 2013, Dr. Jayme Sloan had bad news for Chapman, who was nearly three months pregnant. Her unborn child had tested positive for Edwards syndrome, a genetic condition associated with severe birth defects. If her baby — a boy, the screening test had shown — was born alive, he probably would not live long.
Sloan explained that the test — MaterniT21 PLUS — has a 99 percent detection rate. Though Sloan offered additional testing to confirm the result, a distraught Chapman said she wanted to terminate the pregnancy immediately.
What she — and the doctor — did not understand, Chapman’s medical records indicate, was that there was a good chance her screening result was wrong. There is, it turns out, a huge and crucial difference between a test that can detect a potential problem and one reliable enough to diagnose a life-threatening condition for certain. The screening test only does the first. …
Quote:Stanford University has three cases of unnecessary abortions prompted by faulty results on this test. One of those actually was told that a follow-up test showed that the baby had no such defect, but was convinced that the first test was so accurate it couldn’t possibly have been wrong. But how exactly did doctors and patients get convinced so thoroughly that the tests are reliable? NECIR says it’s the sales pitch, because the FDA doesn’t actually vet the claims