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Through Dirt-Cheap Genetic Testing, Counsyl Is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave
by thundara

    It’s helped women like Jen Baumgartel, a nurse in a Nashville, Tennessee in vitro fertilization clinic, choose IVF over conceiving naturally. Through a Counsyl test, she found out both her and her husband were carriers for Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, which put their potential children at risk of heart problems, developmental delays and cleft palate.

    They had a one-in-four chance of passing the condition on, and both Baumgartel and her husband carried the genes for the severest form of the disease.

    “I was hoping I would get an easy pregnancy,” Baumgartel said. “You never really think about how to avoid passing something onto your child, but suddenly we had this really harsh reality that this is what we would have to do.”

    They ended up spending around $12,000 on in-vitro fertilization and now have a healthy nine-month-old baby girl named Kinley Jo (pictured at the top).