Study Reveals Public Opinion on Polygenic Embryo Screening for IVF
By Stephanie Dutchen,
Harvard Medical School
| 05. 14. 2024
At a glance:
Survey reveals nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults support using emerging technology to screen embryos during IVF for likelihood of developing certain health conditions or traits that arise from more than one gene.
Only about one-third of respondents approved of using the technology to predict traits unrelated to disease.
Nearly all expressed concerns about potential negative outcomes for individuals or society.
Findings underscore need for public education about benefits, limitations, ethical hazards of polygenic risk scores for embryos.
Three out of four adults in the U.S. support the use of emerging technologies that estimate a future child’s likelihood of developing certain health conditions influenced by multiple genes — such as diabetes, heart disease, and depression — before an embryo is implanted during in vitro fertilization (IVF), according to a new public opinion survey led by researchers at Harvard Medical School.
Results of the survey, published May 14 in JAMA Network Open, underscore the need for public education and conversation about the potential positive and negative implications of these ethically fraught technologies, the researchers said.
Although the approach...
Related Articles
By Sarojini Nadimpally and Gargi Mishra, The Wire | 12.15.2024
In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) as assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been in vogue for quite a few decades now. While IVF has been hailed as a significant scientific advancement, with many advantages, here are some limitations which bear keeping in mind...
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
It is hard to make predictions, especially about the future, as Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, and other luminaries have remarked. But there are already signs that the incoming Trump administration may have some difficulty establishing consistent policies about controversial issues concerning human reproduction.
On the one hand, consider “the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration.”
The notorious Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership seeks to delete terms such as “reproductive rights” from “every federal...
By Susan Dominus, The New York Times | 11.30.2024
In the days after Daphna Cardinale delivered her second child, she experienced a rare sense of calm and wonder. The feeling was a relief after so much worrying: She and her husband, Alexander, had tried for three years to conceive...
By Christy Santhosh, Reuters | 11.27.2024
Nov 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is weighing the need for regulatory action on bluebird bio's (BLUE.O), opens new tab gene therapy for a rare neurological disorder, it said on Wednesday, as the agency probes additional...
