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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
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A rash of companies have started offering services to select embryos based on projected disposition, certain diseases, mental illness, height, and even I.Q.
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The backlash against this type of embryonic selection has called it a kind of eugenics 2.0, or “liberal eugenics” by some of the technology’s opponents.
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A new company, named Herasight, claims in a new white paper that it can create polygenic scores more accurate than its competition, but whether that’s a good thing or a bad things remains to be seen.
Unlocking the mysteries of the human genome and understanding the genetic realities that underpin our existence has provided powerful tools for scientists and physicians. With this knowledge, they’ve been able to do things like develop new types of gene therapies, intended to alleviate some of the very worst diseases that afflict humanity. With that power now in the hands of startups, however, things are going off the rails into scientific territories best consigned to history.
In recent years, a plethora of start-ups like Orchid, Nucleus Genomics, and Heliospect Genomics have been trying to turn embryonic selection into a business model by essentially ranking embryos—screening them for certain diseases, mental illnesses, and even IQ. Every single one of these companies has faced backlash for their controversial efforts—which have been referred to as “eugenics 2.0”—but they seem to just keep coming.
Last week, the latest entrant into this embryonic scrum—a company called Herasight—came out of “stealth mode” with a white paper detailing how their embryonic tool can screen for the likelihood of 17 diseases (known as a polygenic score) developing within an embryo, effectively giving parents the opportunity to select the “healthiest” one of the bunch. The company also asserts that it can do this better than the current rogue’s gallery that comprises its technological competition.
Herasight’s announcement post on X (formerly Twitter) also showed a widget displaying predicted embryonic IQs—a method that isn’t explained in the accompanying white paper—which left a few experts scratching their heads.
“I’m curious about the decision to roll out the widget without making the research behind it available,” tweeted Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School. “The goal is to use eugenics backlash to generate a hype cycle and raise more money (while maintaining plausible deniability), yes?”
(A co-author of the paper, UCLA geneticist Alex Strudwick Young, said that details of the IQ predictor will be released in a future white paper.)
All of this is an example of what is called Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Polygenic risk (PGT-P), a process that costs thousands of dollars on top of typical IVF costs. A 2023 study in the journal Nature found that these services are “not sufficiently effective or robust for embryo selection,” and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (a U.K. regulator) echoed that sentiment, the stating that PGT-P “does not meet the criteria for genetic testing and is currently not backed by evidence from scientific studies.” according to The Telegraph. This comes as less of a surprise than some may assume, as the U.S. is basically an embryology wild west and contains virtually no regulations against preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which some see traipsing into the same moral quagmire as eugenics.
Of course, the word “eugenics” conjures up images from some of the darkest pages of human history, as it provided the false scientific basis for some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century. In 1998, New Zealand ethicist Nicholas Agar wrote an article (and subsequent books) on “liberal eugenics”—the idea that parents should have the right to genetically improve their children—and this is a definition that at least one member of Herasight ardently stands by.
“Where I have engaged in academic discussion and debate among fellow philosophers regarding ‘liberal eugenics’[…] my position is that decisions related to reproduction should be left to individual parents, not the state,” Jonathan Anomaly, a co-author on the Herasight white paper, told Hope Not Hate, a U.K.-based investigative group last year after accusations of participating in “race science” via their writings and research. Three other authors on the white paper are also discussed in the Hope Not Hate investigative report, and the accusations are similarly troubling. “My main paper on this subject does not discuss race at all and is clear that while IQ correlates with good social outcomes, it is neither the only factor that matters nor is it an indication of moral worth.”
It’s no secret that the genetic power to predict disease and other attributes in an embryo is incredible, but it’s one best treated with respect, rather than as a way to pad a bottom line.
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