A Cruel Inheritance
The Reardons' children inherited cystic fibrosis; the Johnsons' child has sickle cell disease. Fate has been doubly cruel to both sets of parents, because not only do they have the burden of sick children, but they know that they caused the disease: each parent carried a faulty gene which they passed on to their child.
New techniques of molecular biology now make it possible to diagnose some inherited diseases during pregnancy. Then the parents have the option of abortion, an option most find very difficult and many unacceptable.
Now it is possible to detect the carrier state of some diseases in parents before conception; then couples must decide whether to have children at all. This film follows the Reardons and the Johnsons through their difficult decisions. Narrator Paul Vaughan
Film editor FRANCES PARKER
Horizon editor GRAHAM MASSEY
Written and produced by ROBIN BRIGHTWELL
8HELPLINES: page 66