R&I. – TXPAT ^^^
Rafal Smigrodzki won’t make a big deal of it, but someday, when his toddler daughter Aurea is old enough to understand, he plans to explain that she likely made medical history at the moment of her birth.
Aurea appears to be the first child born after a new type of DNA testing that gave her a “polygenic risk score.” It’s based on multiple common gene variations that could each have tiny effects; together, they create higher or lower odds for many common diseases.
Her parents underwent fertility treatment in 2019 and had to choose which of four IVF embryos to implant. They turned to a young company called Genomic Prediction and picked the embryo given the best genetic odds of avoiding heart disease, diabetes and cancer in adulthood.
“We need to talk about what sort of regulation we want to have in this space,” said co-author Daniel Benjamin, an economist specializing in genetics — or “genoeconomist” — at UCLA.
Unlike the distant prospect of CRISPR-edited designer babies,“this is happening, and it is now,” he said. Many claims by companies that offer DNA-based eating or fitness advice are “basically bunk,” he added, “but this is real. The benefits are real, and the risks are real.”
Among the problems the journal article highlights: Most genetic data is heavily Eurocentric at this point, so parents with other ancestry can’t benefit nearly as much. The science is so new that huge unknowns remain. And selection could exacerbate health disparities among races and classes.
The article also raises concerns that companies marketing embryo selection over-promise, using enticements of “healthy babies” when the scores are only probabilities, not guarantees — and when most differences among embryos are likely to be very small.
FadedJoke
Article URL : https://archive.fo/xpVCm