Mr. Peter Thompson:

If the question is do I think that Down's syndrome or Trisomy 21 is a condition that fulfils the UK law of having a significant chance of severe handicap then I think it does. There are differences as well between babies with normal hearts who have Down's syndrome and babies with abnormal hearts who have Down's syndrome because the co-morbidities with Down's syndrome can greatly affect their outcomes.

One of the things that I did do was outline what happens in my unit in the UK. We also do a lot of the first trimester screening for the country whereby the blood tests are sent to our laboratory. I gave the committee some figures for affected pregnancies and the number of people who have terminations. As one can see, out of the 67 cases that were detected by screening 44 people opted to terminate their pregnancy. That is not 90%. That is a specific subgroup of people because between 30% and 40% of women have already opted out of this screening in the first place. Those women are women who would not want to contemplate having a termination due to Down's syndrome. This is a situation that is person-specific. What affects some people in some people's lives affects others differently.