Couple screening should be preferred for medical reasons

EDITOR,—Oppenheimer and I recently concluded that the cost per detected fetus with cystic fibrosis was about £143000 for couple screening and £147000 for sequential (two step) screening,1 whereas H S Cuckle and colleagues conclude that the cost is about £46000-104000 for couple screening and £40000-90000 for sequential screening.2 Our costs are higher as we assumed that each person or couple would be retested for each pregnancy. Cuckle and colleagues assume that results would be reliably retained from previous pregnancies, and, if this was so, retesting would be unnecessary. …