I bet Planned Parenthood funding goes here too
Up to 90% of theses tests are WRONG!
Sick bastards
“The grave predictions made by those newer tests are usually wrong, an examination by The New York Times has found.
That includes the screening that came back positive for Ms. Geller, which looks for Prader-Willi syndrome, a condition that offers little chance of living independently as an adult. Studies have found its positive results are incorrect more than 90 percent of the time.
Nonetheless, on product brochures and test result sheets, companies describe the tests to pregnant women and their doctors as near certain. They advertise their findings as “reliable” and “highly accurate,” offering “total confidence” and “peace of mind” for patients who want to know as much as possible.
Some of the companies offer tests without publishing any data on how well they perform, or point to numbers for their best screenings while leaving out weaker ones. Others base their claims on studies in which only one or two pregnancies actually had the condition in question.
These aren’t the first Silicon Valley firms to try to build a business around blood tests. Years before the first prenatal testing company opened, another start-up, Theranos, made claims that it could run more than a thousand tests on a tiny blood sample, before it collapsed amid allegations of fraud.
In contrast with Theranos, the science behind these companies’ ability to test blood for common disorders is not in question. Experts say it has revolutionized Down syndrome screening, significantly reducing the need for riskier tests.
However, the same technology — known as noninvasive prenatal testing, or NIPT — performs much worse when it looks for less common conditions. Most are caused by small missing pieces of chromosomes called microdeletions. Others stem from missing or extra copies of entire chromosomes. They can have a wide range of symptoms, including intellectual disability, heart defects, a shortened life span or a high infant mortality rate.
But it is clear some of the tests are in widespread use. One large test maker, Natera, said that in 2020 it performed more than 400,000 screenings for one microdeletion — the equivalent of testing roughly 10 percent of pregnant women in America.
To evaluate the newer tests, The Times interviewed researchers and then combined data from multiple studies to produce the best estimates available of how well the five most common microdeletion tests perform.
The analysis showed that positive results on those tests are incorrect about 85 percent of the time.
……
There are few restrictions on what test makers can offer. The Food and Drug Administration often requires evaluations of how frequently other consequential medical tests are right and whether shortfalls are clearly explained to patients and doctors. But the F.D.A. does not regulate this type of test.
Alberto Gutierrez, the former director of the F.D.A. office that oversees many medical tests, reviewed marketing materials from three testing companies and described them as “problematic.”
“I think the information they provide is misleading,” he said.
Patients who receive a positive result are supposed to pursue follow-up testing, which often requires a drawing of amniotic fluid or a sample of placental tissue. Those tests can cost thousands of dollars, come with a small risk of miscarriage and can’t be performed until later in pregnancy — in some states, past the point where abortions are legal.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/upshot/pregnancy-birth-genetic-testing.html