Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm going to go back to something that's been niggling at the back of my brain. It's an ethical question. Of course, as a physician you know the non nocere thing, and you don't want to harm anyone. Obviously, if you can help people who have rare diseases, if you can understand what causes the diseases, if you can find treatments for them, if you can put people in touch with others and they can form support groups, etc., this is all excellent.
Given that we can now get somebody's complete DNA profile, is any work being done whereby one can do this in utero through amniocentesis, through some way of taking cord blood, or something from the baby in utero, to look at this? If one is able to say that a child is going to be born with a rare disease, let us imagine the situation where, because rare diseases are going to cost so much to treat or to maintain that person with a healthy lifestyle throughout their life....
Do you remember when people used to say that children who were born with Down's syndrome weren't compatible with life? I'm talking about many years ago. Now we know that Down's syndrome kids grow up and live really happy adult lives. Do you see there being this negative thing where people will start saying maybe we shouldn't...maybe we should consult with the mother to abort this baby. Or maybe if someone is coming up with some DNA profile, the coincidental stuff that we find out turns out to be somebody with a gene that says they're going to be an axe murderer or serial killer. Do you see this kind of thing leading to those negative outcomes?
What are you doing as a group to look at the ethics of this and to find a way to take the benefit from this, while guarding very strongly against non nocere?