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Despite advances in understanding the combined effects of multiple genes on complex traits in humans, efforts to choose embryos based on the likelihood of their carrying such traits would be unlikely to meet with much success, researchers report today (November 21) in Cell.
It has been possible for decades for would-be parents to conceive embryos through in vitro fertilization, then have the embryos tested for particular disease-causing gene variants, a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). While PGD is used mainly in rare cases when a couple knows they carry sequences with a risk for a specific, single-gene disease, bioethicists and others have worried that it has the potential to be applied in selecting so-called designer babies.
The new study was prompted, in part, by recent advances in using analyses of genetic data to construct what are known as polygenic risk scores, which use information ...
