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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.
This episode was reported by Juliana Kim. It was produced by Liam McBain. It was edited by Neena Pathak. We had engineering support from David Greenburg...