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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3313 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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A couple I know is doing IVF. They have the embryos already but they aren't implanted. I suggested they select the one to implant using genetic testing which a few companies offer at wildly varying costs. Does it really work? Are there downsides? If it can do what's advertised, it would seem to be worth the cost, which is several thousand dollars at most.

For pregnancy prescreening the effectiveness of the tests have been called into question. Embryos are different but might suffer from the same issues?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/upshot/pregnancy-birth-genetic-testing.html

Nothing here suggests the tests are ineffective. For a rare condition correctly predicting the fetus has the condition 15 times out of 100 implies the test must very accurate. It's the same thing where if you have a 99% accurate test for a condition that only 0.1% of the population is affected by then given the test says you have the condition you only have a 10% chance of actually having the condition.

Ineffective was not the right word, but it seems that some of the tests give a lot of false positives. If using it to screen embryos you'd delete a lot of healthy ones. If you have a limited number of embryos or a high rate of failure of embryo to pregnancy it might not be wise to use this as screening criteria.

More information is always better. They could decide to still use all the embryos but just try the best ones first.

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