Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Irid Glass, the host of This American Life.
0:02.9	So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office.
0:07.3	It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what.
0:10.7	Just try and do that.
0:11.4	We've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling,
0:16.1	and you get to see people everywhere making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in.
0:21.4	This American Life, wherever you get your podcast.
0:26.5	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:31.7	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:43.3	Thank you. in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Brittany, there's this drive to make sure that your child is as successful as possible and a high
0:50.2	achiever.
0:51.3	And the way it translates to genetic selection is that we think, ooh, if we have a new
0:55.5	tool to select the best embryo, I'm ethically obligated to do that, just like I'm ethically
1:01.0	obligated to pay for tutoring and, you know, violin classes and gymnastics competitions.
1:07.3	Like if you have the means, then why not? Exactly.
1:11.9	Have you seen the movie Gattaca?
1:13.8	The 1997 Sleeper Hit movie shows a society where every person is born through genetic selection for the best possible genes.
1:22.5	And in the film, Ethan Hawk plays a guy who was conceived the traditional way, who steals someone else's identity to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut,
1:31.0	because his own genes were deemed inferior.
1:34.1	Jerome Morrow, Navigator First Class, is about to embark on a one-year manned mission to Titan.
1:41.2	A highly prestigious assignment, although for Jerome,
1:46.8	selection was virtually guaranteed at birth.
	...

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