Screening out autism (genetics)

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The topic has featured here before, but not this company with an apparently mature technology to screen out gametes with a risk of autism (initially focusing on sperm), on sale to prospective parents from December:

"A service that digitally weaves together the DNA of prospective parents to check for potential disease in thousands of "virtual babies" is set to launch in the US by December.
New York start-up Genepeeks will initially focus on donor sperm, simulating before pregnancy how the genetic sequence of a female client might combine with those of different males.
Donors that more often produce "digital children" with a higher risk of inherited disorders will be filtered out, leaving those who are better genetic matches." (BBC News, 4 Oct 2013 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24398312)

“What we can do and maybe nobody else can do yet is anticipate the genetics of reproduction so we can predict the genetic profile of a child,” says (Genepeeks co-founder Anne) Morriss. “The analytic target for us won’t be the parents. It’ll be the child, which allows us to look for autism and diabetes and complex traits.” (http://www.bio-itworld.com/2013/1/4/spe ... ogeny.html)

Genepeeks are currently advertising a job opportunity for a "Ph.D. in human genetics, biostatistics, computer science or related field, or comparable training in the computational analysis of personal genomes ... Research experience with and /or knowledge of clinical aspects of the genetic causes of autism, schizophrenia and other neurological disorders" (http://genepeeks.com/careers)

In terms of each condition that can be screened for, this is an all or nothing proposition. We get a lot of those here! I can also see where preventing cases of autism spectrum disorders might ultimately be damaging to humanity, even barring actual genome manipulation. We don't even really know how many of us there are in the world, diagnosed or otherwise. This doesn't put anyone in a position to say that the condition as a whole has been detrimental, so I hope that parents who buy into these services will be aware that seeking to modify reproductive paradigm could actually result in less intelligent offspring. Many autistic individuals stand to cure the symptoms of the condition in their lifetimes anyway, especially considering the computational tools becoming available to this field. Stepping around it entirely IS NOT A SOLUTION, and I don't just say that from the perspective of an embittered autistic; there's still no anecdotal proof that autism spectrum isn't an adaptation in it's own right.

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