A Changing Landscape for Down Syndrome?

Illustration by Barry Falls

A BBC documentary, “Born with Down’s syndrome,” aired in Britain last night.

Apparently one of the many differences between British English and American English is that here it is called Down syndrome. Another difference, according to the documentary, is that the rate of babies being born with the genetic defect is increasing over there. (I have not seen the film myself, but you can read reports of it in London papers here, here and here.)

The availability of screening for Down syndrome became widespread about 20 years ago, and since then the number of cases has dropped precipitously as most women who received the diagnosis chose to terminate the pregnancy. The numbers remain lower in the U.S., but in Britain, where cases had fallen between from a high of 717 in 1989 to a low of 594 in 2000, the number of births began rising again, reaching 749 in 2006, the last year for which data is available.

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