Thu Apr 21, 2022 – 7:26 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning that prenatal screening tests for genetic abnormalities, which lead some women to have abortions, can give “false results” and in some cases have high chances of false positives.
(NIPS) tests, which are designed only to tell a baby’s risk of a genetic abnormality and not to “definitively confirm or rule out” such an abnormality, are often claimed by laboratories to be “reliable,” “highly accurate,” and offering “peace of mind” to patients, the FDA pointed out in a notice issued Tuesday.
However, the FDA “is concerned that these claims may not be supported with sound scientific evidence,” and that in some cases where rare disorders are being screened for, such as when microdeletions are being detected, “there may be a high chance” of a false positive.
Despite a substantial risk of inaccurate results, the FDA said it has been made aware that women have had abortions “based only on the results of NIPS tests.” However, without a confirmatory diagnostic test, “there is no way to know” whether the baby actually had the genetic abnormality indicated by the screening test,
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