Sarah Norcross, Director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), said:
This Independent Review correctly draws attention to the confusion that surrounds polygenic risk scores when these are mistaken for more traditional forms of genomic data.
The Review is also correct to raise concern over the use of polygenic scores in embryo selection, a practice that is – and should remain – prohibited in the UK. The problem with using polygenic scores in this way is not so much about the ethics of embryo selection in general, but rather about the fact that there is no scientific justification for thinking that polygenic scores are meaningful in relation to selecting embryos at all.
In other words, the problem here is false claims that polygenic scores can be useful in assisted conception. The falsity of these claims has been pointed out by bodies including the European Society of Human Genetics, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics, and the International Common Disease Alliance.
To the extent that polygenic risk scores are useful in certain contexts, at present they are most likely to be useful for people of European ancestry. This is because European ancestry is disproportionately represented in the underlying genomic data. This has been the case ever since whole genome sequencing first started at the beginning of this century.
As this Review observes, commendable efforts are being made to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, though, even when people with non-European ancestry are present in widely available datasets, studies will often exclude the data of these minorities in order to ensure statistical power.