Recent media coverage of a blood test for Down’s syndrome suggests that children with the condition are being depicted as non-persons. The Daily Mail, Britain’s second-largest newspaper, announced that “A quick inexpensive blood test for Down's syndrome that could save the lives of hundreds of unborn babies each year is being developed by scientists”. However, the main result of the test would to terminate hundreds of unborn babies with Down’s syndrome.

The lives of unaffected babies could be considered “saved” only in the sense that they would not be miscarried as a result of invasive investigations to detect and destroy Down’s syndrome babies.

Despite the publicity given to this preliminary report of research by Dutch scientists at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, a successful test is still several years away. Professor Stephen Robson, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, described it as the “holy grail” of pre-natal testing. ~ Daily Mail, June 30