“Have Your Best Baby”: IVF Genetic Selection of Embryos for IQ, Height, Eye Color and Disease Risk

At least four companies are providing genetic screening for embryos so parents using in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to get pregnant can selectively choose embryos for the traits they desire. Nucleus Genomics, one of the major players in this genetic test, advertises that you can “have your best baby” by using “the modern way to plan and have a baby, driven by science, guided by love.” The company says parents can now “choose” their baby’s height, intelligence, and eye color while also selecting embryos with the lowest risk of certain diseases, including Alzheimer’s, cancers, heart disease, and diabetes.

Noor Siddiqui, founder of a competitor embryo screening company called Orchid, once said, “Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies.” She also said, “We’ve always sought to protect our children—embryo screening simply moves that protection earlier. The true moral question isn’t whether we should use this technology, but whether we can justify withholding it when it could prevent needless suffering… In 10 years, not screening your embryos will feel like not buckling your seatbelt.”

These companies do not genetically modify or alter DNA. Rather, they partner with IVF companies to screen embryos for disease risk, intelligence, and characteristics like height, hair color, and eye color. Notably, IVF clinics already allow parents to choose whether the chosen implanted embryo will be a girl or boy. The HighWire reported last month about Cathy Tie, a Canadian entrepreneur known as “biotech barbie,” who is in an arms race to genetically modify embryos to reduce the risk of diseases.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Nucleus Genomics CEO Kian Sadeghi and questioned him about the ethical concerns associated with embryo selection and whether or not the practice is a type of eugenics. The Encyclopedia Britannica says eugenics is the “selection of desired heritable characteristics in order to improve future generations,” which aligns with the definition by Francis Galton who coined the term in 1883.

Sadeghi insisted that the process is not eugenics, because it does not include sterilization or restrictions on who can reproduce. Carlson said the process of selecting an embryo with superior traits is “literally breeding” by “bringing new life into the world and you’re deciding which of these embryos becomes a person.”

Carlson also asked whether there is a downside to “playing God.” He added, “We’re making choices that were not available to us until very recently that have never in human history been made by people ever. Not one time.”

In addition to the ethical concerns about “playing God” or engaging in eugenics, there are other concerns related to the technology. For one, the actual genetic screening process as a method to reduce disease burden is “unproven” and there is “insufficient evidence” to support its utility according to a 2024 paper written by genetics professionals.

The authors wrote, “We reaffirm the recent statement by the ACMG Board of Directors on a related topic that “prenatal testing for disorders that exhibit multigenic or polygenic inheritance is not yet appropriate for clinical use and should not be offered as direct-to-consumer testing.” The authors said this issue must first be resolved, but there are additional social, ethical, and legal ramifications that should be evaluated by relevant stakeholders before this technology is utilized as a public service.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is a primary investor in Nucleus Genomics. Thiel co-founded Palantir Technologies in 2003, which is a big data, CIA-backed surveillance firm. The Guardian wrote in 2017, “Palantir watches everything you do and predicts what you will do next in order to stop it.”

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe and former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is an investor in Orchid Health. 23andMe filed bankruptcy last year and Wojcicki purchased the genetic data it collected from approximately 13 million users and has now turned the company into a non-profit. The company also agreed to an $18 million settlement with 42 state attorneys general for a 2023 data breach of personal information from 6.9 million users.

The Economist published an op-ed this week stating that concerns about “immoral” and “immature tech” are not convincing. The author argues that limitations of polygenic scores, including the less predictable outcomes for those without European descent, is only an argument for disclosure rather than a ban or heavy restriction. The author states that claims of immorality on the basis of the process being unnatural are not valid, because “unnatural technology is already used in many modern births.”

Sadeghi argues that the use of this technology cannot be compared to eugenicism in the way it is being used, because the people that work for his company are not telling parents which embryos are better. Rather, his company is providing more information and the parents decide what is subjectively best for them. He provided an example of a deaf couple who deliberately wanted a child who was also deaf. Sadeghi claims that there is variation in what families would choose, so the additional information is not being used to create a genetically superior class of humans as eugenics implies.

The Economist agrees with Sadeghi and references a 2019 study where parents could increase the height of their child by 1-6 centimeters and increase their IQ by one to seven points. The advance of technology, including genetic databases and AI will increase the ability for these scores to improve.

Nucleus Genomics and Orchid are providing services to help parents create “designer-ish babies,” as described by the Economist, while other companies are working on ways to genetically modify embryos. Still, a new technology is on the horizon that could make natural incubation with a human womb optional. Artificial wombs are already being prepared for clinical trials in the coming years to help babies who are born prematurely.

The idea of using artificial wombs for the full gestational period is still considered theoretical but bioethicists are already worried about a slippery slope that involves the study of human embryos.

“For those of us who believe that humans are humans and deserving of ethical respect, whether embryonic, adolescent, or elderly, these experiments are unethical,” Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a Georgetown University bioethicist, told NPR.