Yaron Goikhman

Bahrain's new premarital rules add G6PD, hepatitis C and rubella immunity checks. An "incompatible" result still doesn't ban the marriage. A September review of such laws: about 1 in 3 at-risk couples didn't marry (weak data). Did the rest hear about prenatal testing or PGT-M?

New Zealand's IVF ethics committee approved HLA-typing a couple's embryos, hoping for a "saviour sibling" for their child with a transfusion-dependent condition. Tough odds: about 1 in 4 embryos is a full match. I'd back it, with an independent advocate for the donor child.

Viral claim: 75–80% of US IVF patients want a girl. The data is messier. A 2007 Midwest patient survey leaned girl (64%). But at one NJ clinic, 2,341 euploid transfers picked by sex: 56.5% boys (JARG 2024). Legal in the US, banned in the UK and Canada. Argue from real numbers.

The US put Chinese genomics giant BGI and sister sequencer maker MGI on its forced-labour import list. MGI calls it unfounded. BGI's NIFTY prenatal test was sold in 52+ countries (Reuters, 2021). Politics aside, ask who sequences your NIPT or embryo DNA, and where it's kept.

Can AI spot a chromosomally normal embryo from one day-5 photo plus the mother's age? A developer's ASRM 2026 poster, 207 embryos: AUC 0.66. Pitched as triage: test top picks first, defer ~19% of biopsies (simulated). Beats a coin flip. Not a biopsy. Show me prospective data.

On ASRM's program today: a carrier screen flags a variant that only sometimes causes disease. Order PGT-M? The session's own blurb says report wording and fear of liability can sway that call. My take: explain the real odds, offer it, and never push IVF to cover yourself.

Unexplained infertility, so test the embryos? A Moscow study of 226 IVF cycles points the other way: live birth per egg retrieval was 36.5% with PGT-A vs 55.7% without. The PGT-A group was older, but the gap held after adjusting. One center, retrospective. Ask why first.

New in Frontiers: 2,357 tested embryos, mostly from couples with recurrent miscarriage. Female age and sperm DNA fragmentation mattered. But even with AMH and BMI added, they sorted normal embryos barely better than a coin flip (AUC 0.57). Bloodwork can't choose the embryo.

Ferring signed to buy Gameto for up to $1.38B. The pitch: a few days of hormone shots, not two weeks, then eggs mature in a dish beside lab-grown support cells. Fewer shots is a real win. But the randomized data is 10 women vs 10, against older IVM. Not against regular IVF.

Nature calls it a first: a prime edit made inside a living person. Prime Medicine's trial rewrites a Wilson disease mutation (H1069Q) in liver cells. Data due 2027. Exciting. But it fixes the liver, not eggs or sperm. A treated patient still passes a variant to every child.

Asked a chatbot your IVF odds? Careful. ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek got 1,473 IVF cycles (JARG). Best pregnancy call: Gemini, AUC 0.71. ASRM 2026 poster: top models ranked patients like an IVF-built model, but the % were off and less stable. Prep questions with it. Not odds.

Oman now tells marriage registrars: no premarital screening certificate, no marriage contract. The tests cover sickle cell and thalassaemia, plus HIV, hepatitis B and C, and syphilis. A good floor. Related partners or a family history? Ask about wider carrier screening.

A Northwestern talk at ASRM today: limited IVF insurance coverage is linked to more embryo testing, not less. Older US data agree. PGT was about 30% less likely in states with IVF mandates. Pay for one cycle yourself and you want it to count. But testing can't add embryos.

A start-up's drug nearly doubled chromosomally normal eggs in a lab study at ASRM yesterday: 65.6% vs 35.7%, each donor's eggs split at random. Right target. PGT-A only sorts embryos. It can't make more good ones. But no egg was fertilised and no patient has had it yet.

Europe has a new free patient guide to genetic testing in IVF (Council of Europe, with ESHRE and ESHG). It says what many clinic sites won't: neither ASRM nor ESHRE recommends routine PGT-A, and ESHG and ESHRE don't recommend PGT-P in clinic. Not "never." Ask why it fits you.

One ASRM 2026 talk on Day 7 embryos is titled "The value of waiting." Fair, with a caveat. A 2026 meta-analysis of 17 retrospective studies: live birth ~19% for Day 7 transfers vs 38% Day 6 and 50% Day 5. Even euploid Day 7s did worse. With few embryos, still worth keeping.

Three women told TODAY about testing embryos for BRCA. One went from 49 eggs to 7 usable embryos. Another: 12 eggs, 3 embryos, 1 she could use. What surprised all of them wasn't the test. It was the attrition. PGT-M for BRCA is reasonable. Talk numbers before day one.

Canada's 2025 IVF registry: PGT-A went from 20.5% of cycles in 2019 to 40.7%. ERA fell to 1.7%. One add-on shrank as evidence came in. The other doubled. PGT-A has real uses, but in younger patients with good embryos, big trials haven't shown more babies. So who is it for?

Exome carrier screening in Mexico's Jewish community (preprint, Hadassah + Mexico City): 787 couples, 49 (6.2%) both carriers for the same recessive condition. Standard panels would have missed 12 of the 49. But ~two-thirds were mild conditions. More genes, more counselling.

Orchid's own team checked 10 embryo biopsies against the genomes of the kids later born. All 42 de novo variants in 3 of those kids were in the biopsy data. Impressive. But its 1,200-gene panel missed ~1 in 60 variants, and n=10. I'd want an outside lab and hundreds of pairs.