The department of Health incorporates since October the preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of embryos to the public services of the Navarra Health Service. PGD consists of detecting genetic alterations in the embryos created at laboratory or identifying embryos compatible with a sick sibling, in order to try to cure them with compatible bone marrow. The embryos with the alteration Genetics or that are not compatible, even if they are healthy, are destroyed and only apparently healthy or compatible embryos are transferred to the woman's uterus. It is thus said to be a technique to prevent and cure certain diseases.

However, in medicine, prevention means applying measures so that people do not become ill (for example, avoiding smoking, eliminating a benign tumor so that it does not become malignant...). PGD does not prevent or avoid disease in a person, but eliminates the person with that disease or who has a higher risk of developing it in the future. In fact, some embryos, had they continued with their life, might not have developed the disease in question. On the other hand, some people who do not initially have an alteration Genetics may develop the disease by other mechanisms. And neither does PGD ensure that this person will not develop another subject of diseases, perhaps more serious than the one that was intended to be avoided.

The suffering of parents who are going to have a sick child is absolutely understandable, but sick or disabled people are still valuable and always contribute something to society. There are no diseases, only sick people, and every human being, whether born or unborn, healthy or sick, has a dignity that must be respected. That is why we physicians have the obligation to research, study and contribute to scientific progress in order to be able to fulfill our mission statement of curing, alleviating and accompanying. Destroying people because their genome does not meet the expected standards of quality is not medicine but eugenics. Accepting that in order to achieve a good end it is justified to use means that destroy human lives is not progress but regression. Perhaps the money invested in developing PGD could have been invested in researching the mechanisms of diseases, finding new ways to prevent and diagnose them and developing more effective treatments while respecting the human being above all else. That would be true scientific progress.