Media portrayal of non-invasive prenatal testing: a missing ethical dimension

Abstract

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is an emerging technology for detecting chromosomal disorders in the fetus and mass media may have an impact on shaping the public understanding of its promise and challenges. We conducted a content analysis of 173 news reports to examine how NIPT was portrayed in English-language media sources between January 1 and December 31, 2013. Our analysis has shown that media emphasized the benefits and readiness of the technology, while overlooking uncertainty associated with its clinical use. Ethical concerns were rarely addressed in the news stories, which points to an important dimension missing in the media discourse. AbstractHealth communication; Representations of science and technology

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Women Toward Prenatal Genetic Testing

“…Thus, whereas women might only be considering medical risks as the grounds for whether NIPGS should be mandatory, and that as it carries none besides those associated with a blood draw, once NIPGS is actually available, the conceptualization of the "risks" and personalized or societal implications involved will most likely evolve and complexify, extending to more emotional and moral dimensions, such that the idea of imposing the test on someone will seem less of an obvious answer or purely noble act. 6,34,37,39,40,[42][43][44] Other results of this study further support the need to preemptively ensure that any policies to promote NIPGS in Jordan explicitly protect and support parents' autonomy. For example, the spread of hypothesized reactions to post-results decisionmaking, for example, the differing interest in abortion depending on the condition identified, and the meaningfully high proportion of women who felt they "shouldered the blame" for conceiving a fetus with congenital malformations, or that their husbands felt they did so, raise important concerns about whether mandatory NIPGS would actually broaden and benefit all women in Jordan, or whether the involuntary imposition of such knowledge would be a burden to them.…”

“…6,34-36 Moreover, these studies, and related discussion of the moral grounds for NIPGS, emphasize that simply offering NIPGS on the reasoning that by providing more information, clients have more choices, or that advising physicians that informed consent should be garnered before performing the tests, is not enough to satisfy these demands for the protection and primacy of autonomy. 6,34,35,37-41 According to this literature, men and women, with and without the experience of pregnancy or a pregnant partner, articulated concern about the implications if informed consent were merely cursory, and NIPGS presented was presented to clients with provider bias, patients were not allowed to change their minds about receiving the results once tests were conducted; patients were influenced or stigmatized as to their decisions on whether to continue a pregnancy even in the event that a tests revealed the fetus was at risk for a congenital defect, and so on. 6,34–36 Although our results, taken from a context wherein congenital anomalies are especially common and salient in the lives of the study population, indicate that a slight majority of women believed NIPGS should be mandatory, they nonetheless support these assertions.…”

CRISPR in the North American popular press

“…After general critiques (25.4%) the second and third most common risk/concerns were related to germline modifications (18.0%) and designer babies (15.8%), which reflect issues foregrounded in the relevant academic literature, 16,17 as well as the research on the public perception surrounding the therapy–enhancement and the somatic–germline distinctions. 19 Compared with the media discourse surrounding other recent biomedical topics, such as stem cells, precision (or personalized) medicine, or noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS), where the media representation has shown promotion with very little detailing of issues, 12,13,21 the current media portrayal of CRISPR includes a higher percentage of articles containing risks/concerns.…”

“We have been forced to move away from home”: print news coverage of Canadians studying abroad at Caribbean offshore medical schools

“…This analysis has identified two ways that the Canadian print media frame offshore medical schools and the CSAs they train. We contend that our focus on framing is useful as it has drawn attention to how communicated texts reveal dominant meanings in the context of this particular dialogue [ 29 ]. Following Entman’s framing paradigm [ 30 ], framing has four functions: defining problems, diagnosing causes, making judgements, and suggesting solutions.…”

“…Understanding media representions is important because citizen awareness is largely developed through media accounts, which can have direct policy impications [ 25 , 27 , 28 ]. Moreover, news media have shown to provide legitimacy to certain opinions and perspectives [ 29 ]. Finally, and importantly in the context of the current under-researched topic, examining publicly available datasets, such as print media, is an empirical first step towards identifying, and in some cases addressing, knowledge gaps.…”