Can Doctors Test Embryos for Autism? Should They?
Listen to what Vardit Ravitsky has to say on NPR
A newly available kind of genetic testing, called polygenic embryo screening, promises to screen for conditions that can include cancer, obesity, autism, and bipolar disorder. 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? Hastings Center President Vardit Ravitsky explores these questions on NPR’s “It’s Been a Minute.” She expresses concern that prospective parents may reason that “if we have a new tool to select the best embryo, I’m ethically obligated to do that.“ Listen to the NPR interview.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1263527123
I began writing the first version back in 2016. It was released on 2 June 2017. Eight years ago!
This is so odd. It makes me smile.
When I listen to Vardit Ravitsky, it’s like I am listening to myself. It’s unreal.
(It’s the second time that this is happening re Vardit.)
It means that I can relax. She is doing what I would be doing if were her.
I’ve had this happen before, but only to a very limited degree, with Stephen Hawking. When I read “A brief history of time”, I saw to my utter amazement that he had wondered about the same things that I had wondered about when I was still a child. Nobody around me did that. That was puzzling. I’d always felt a little guilty about leaving those questions unanswered. Then I saw “Okay, there are people out there who are figuring this out, so I can stop feeling guilty now”.
It’s also a little bit like when I found out stuff about my mother’s cousin Céleste Herberichs.
It makes you feel you belong.
It tells you that there are people out there who are “your people”. To my relatives, my scientific curiosity and all that was just something to mock me about and to ridicule and to be ashamed of.