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Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?

Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?

It's Been a Minute vor 1 Jahr

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23:06

A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo
screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include
cancer, obesity, autism, bipolar disorder, even celiac disease.
These conditions are informed by many genetic variants and
environmental factors - so companies like Orchid and Heliospect
assign risk scores to each embryo for a given condition. These
tests are expensive, only available through IVF, and some
researchers question how these risk scores are calculated. But what
would it mean culturally if more people tried to screen out some of
these conditions? And how does this connect to societal ideas about
whose lives are meaningful?

Brittany gets into it with Vardit Ravitsky, senior lecturer at
Harvard Medical School and president of the Hastings Center, a
non-partisan bioethics research center, and Katie Hasson, associate
director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a nonprofit public
affairs organization that advocates for responsible use of genetic
technology.

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