Like high-tech fortune-telling, the screening estimates the chances that embryos will produce children at risk for thousands of illnesses, from rare inherited disorders such as Tay-Sachs and cystic fibrosis to common diseases with genetic factors such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.
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“We call it genetic optimization,” says Kian Sadeghi, founder and CEO of Nucleus Genomics. “We help people have their best babies. ” …
But the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the American Association of Reproductive Medicine say the science of polygenic risk scores hasn’t progressed enough to produce reliable estimates. Beyond genes, the environment and lifestyle are important factors for many diseases. Some also argue the screening raises troubling moral, ethical and societal concerns.
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Some fear parents will be disappointed if the babies don’t live up to their expectations.
“The thought would be: … “We paid for you to not have cancer. How can you have developed cancer?'” says James Tabery, a bioethicist at The University of Utah. “There’s this illusion of control that doesn’t actually exist. And if you are the product of that perceived control that doesn’t exist, you can be targeted as the problem.”
