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Comment by stemlord | Hacker News Reader

You have a very optimistic view on eugenics in practice

I do, partly because my wife and I are beneficiaries of it already. We had our genomes available in the first place because our embryos are likely to grow into children with congenital conditions (my wife and I are carriers) and pre-implantation testing is what has enabled us to dodge the high-likelihood errors.

Walk into an obstetrics clinic in San Francisco and you’ll find pamphlets for https://www.natera.com/womens-health/spectrum-preimplantatio... there. Many parents like us will have children that are free of conditions the parents carry because of artificial genetic selection.

The eugenics question aside, Natera is an awful, scammy business:

https://zlk.com/press/ntra-class-action-learn-about-the-nate...

https://hindenburgresearch.com/natera/

https://www.classaction.org/news/class-action-alleges-custom...

Oh, interesting. We used a different service. Glad we dodged that. Thank you.

EDIT: Though, on reading, it appears that the 'scam' in question is that they received prior authorization from insurers by using doctors' credentials. The service itself works as-is.

All of our stuff is just straight up medical expenses out of our bank account. No insurer is involved in our use of IVF or PGT since we just use concierge care. Insurance-based care is probably the best way for folks to get it affordably right now, but if you have the money you definitely want to be getting concierge service: no delays and no one between you and the person providing you the service.

This is a form of survivor bias.

Everyone has an optimistic view of eugenics in practice when it comes to mate selection. How is embryo selection any different?

The difference is selecting for or against specific alleles vs playing the 50-50 haploid game.

Some of us think nurture matters more than nature, too.

In IQ? Assuming reasonable training, nutrition, and lack of brain damage? How?

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