The Slow Newscast Your best baby
Mar 10, 2026
Professor Anna Lukason, Director of the Centre for Personalised Medicine at Oxford, gives a concise scientific perspective on polygenic risk scores and embryo screening. She discusses the statistical limits of prediction and population-data pitfalls. She also highlights environmental influences and why headline claims can mislead.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Founder Story Born From Family Tragedy
- Kian Sadegi founded Nucleus Genomics after a cousin died suddenly from Long QT and he realised genetic testing could prevent such deaths.
- He dropped out of university, cold-texted an angel investor, and built a company offering thousands of genetic tests from one swab.
Embryo Sequencing Offers Risk And Trait Selection
- Nucleus Genomics sequences embryos to estimate risks for thousands of conditions and offers parents choices about embryo selection.
- The company markets this as not only disease prevention but also selecting traits like height or IQ.
First Reported Baby Chosen By Polygenic Scores
- Rafal Szmigrodsky used Genomic Prediction to test five IVF embryos and implanted the one with the lowest predicted cardiovascular risk.
- His daughter Aurea became the first baby publicly reported as chosen through such polygenic embryo selection.