Picking Embryos With Best Health Odds Sparks New DNA Debate
- Science could allow parents to select for taller, smarter kids
- ‘It’s just another way of preventing disease,’ one father says
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
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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.