Comment by jasongill
1 month ago
The NHS does nothing of the sort, in fact, they recommend them as safe and routine.
https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/your-pregnancy-care/ultrasound-...
> The scans are painless, have no known side effects on mothers or babies, and can be carried out at any stage of pregnancy.
If you read the linked article, you'd see that most of it focused on how extremely hard it was to get the ultrasound to do anything - it required an MRI and exact positioning of the ultrasound transducer. I doubt that 5 minutes of being gently prodded through the skin and fat is going to harm a child. Also, ultrasounds (and waves and radiation of all sorts) are passing into your body at all times, so it's not like they are exposing the fetus to something rare or unusual.
The NHS are less strident about this these days (I haven't checked since my sons were born - they used to dissuade 5d scans entirely), but this guide gives a flavour of the caution they invoke around private scans:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-commercial...
Not sure if you actually read this document before posting it, but it is just a general cautionary statement, not about any specific test (and surely not about prenatal ultrasounds which have been proven safe).
All this says is effectively "all screening carries risks such as false results and overdiagnosis, so people should carefully assess benefits, harms, evidence, and costs before choosing private tests".