fe.tus
Variant(s): or chiefly British foe.tus Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural fe.tus.es or chiefly British foe.tus.es or foe.ti : an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually three months after conception to birth. From the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. --Jerry 10/14/98
By AISLING IRWIN in London, The Telegraph, London 10/10/98

An American scientist has caused an ethical uproar by proposing to perform experiments on foetuses destined for abortion.

Professor French Anderson, a respected pioneer in the field of gene therapy, has asked an American ethics committee for permission to experiment on foetuses known to have serious genetic disorders and whose mothers have already decided to have abortions because of this.

Left to nature, the babies would either be stillborn or born with severe diseases.

Professor Anderson, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, hopes eventually to be able to perform gene therapy on such babies in the uterus so that they are born healthy.

But he claims that to avoid mistakes it would be useful to practise his therapy at first on unborn babies destined for abortion. Some ethicists said they were appalled at the proposal.

His proposed experiments also raise the prospect of "designer babies". Once the method is perfected, it could just as easily be used to exchange or add genes that determine physical appearance.

Gene therapy aims to replace a faulty, disease-causing gene with an intact one. For diseases caused solely by a single genetic mutation, such as cystic fibrosis, it is a highly attractive dream, but scientists have found it hard to persuade a child's or adult's cells to accept the new genes.

Performed on an unborn child - for example by injecting a virus carrying the new gene through the mother's abdominal wall - the therapy would treat the cells in a far more receptive state.

Professor Anderson has asked the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee if he can experiment on foetuses known to carry severe genetic diseases.

Professor Anderson would try gene therapy on these foetuses and, after abortion, examine them to see how successful the treatment was.

Experts have raised a deluge of ethical issues over the proposal, including the possibility that if the therapy worked the mother would learn that she had aborted a healthy baby.

But Mr Alastair Kent, director of the Genetic Interest Group, which represents sufferers of genetic diseases, said that refusing to contemplate the research would "cut off a line of research which may be the best hope for some of these disorders".