Silicon Valley Is Gambling on a Burgeoning ‘Designer Baby’ Industry

The latest trend among wealthy investors, startup founders, and select fertility clinics is turning embryo selection and genetic prediction into a high-end consumer product. Clinics are charging upwards of $50,000 to “optimize” a child’s health and, in some cases, tilt the odds on traits like intelligence, height, or eye color.With elaborate names like polygenic risk scoring of embryos and preimplantation genetic testing, procedures that were once science fiction now constitute a growing market among America’s elite, prompting industry observers to sound the alarm.Statistical geneticist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a contributor to advanced IVF methods, Shai Carmi, tells the New York Sun that the potential “intelligence” gains are, at least for now, modest.“Current estimates would be about three to five points on average. However, importantly, this gain is not guaranteed,” he says. “In a realistic setting, the main problem is that IVF patients rarely have enough embryos to select from. Very often they would have just one or two viable embryos, and the gains will be nearly zero.”The novelty is not in the science itself — genetic screening of embryos has been possible in research settings for years — but in how it’s being sold. Startups are marketing “embryo optimization” as a luxury consumer service, with sleek branding, podcast appearances, and private pitch dinners aimed at wealthy clients.That shift comes with a steep price tag. A single IVF cycle with these services can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and most families need multiple rounds to produce enough embryos for meaningful selection. In practice, this makes embryo scoring an option almost exclusively for affluent venture capitalists, tech founders, and patients at elite fertility clinics.“In a typical IVF cycle, you might get five embryos. Some of these companies claim you’d need to generate 100 embryos to optimize IQ, which would require many IVF cycles — extremely expensive and burdensome. Wealthy clients may not care about that, but it’s still a huge undertaking,” a statistical geneticist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, Neil Risch, tells the Sun. “If someone really wanted to maximize a child’s IQ, choosing a partner with a high IQ would be far more effective than trying to select embryos.”How it WorksThe technology driving this market is not gene editing but genetic testing. Embryo optimization begins with standard in vitro fertilization, better known as IVF, where multiple eggs are fertilized in a lab. What’s new is the layer of genetic testing added on top.Companies like Orchid, Genomic Prediction, and others offer polygenic scoring, which analyzes each embryo’s DNA to not only flag hereditary diseases, but also generate “scores” for more complex traits.These scores estimate the relative likelihood of conditions such as diabetes or heart disease, as well as of characteristics like educational attainment or IQ. Parents can choose which embryo to implant based on these predictions.So how do these offerings differ from what standard IVF clinics already provide?“In the USA, most labs already perform genetic testing to verify the right number of chromosomes, so there is essentially no additional intervention. It’s just about which embryo to select,” Mr. Carmi explains.From his perspective, this approach carries “possible risks.”“The first is that by focusing on a single embryo with the highest predicted IQ, if that embryo is not born, the couple may end up not having any child, which counteracts their reason for using IVF,” he says.“The second risk is that embryos with a genetic predisposition for high IQ may also have a high genetic risk for some diseases. Indeed, selection for high IQ should slightly increase the risk for autism and anorexia. Thus, in my personal view, the biggest risk is that future parents will feel pressured to have children via IVF without any medical indication.”In other words, research indicates that selecting embryos based solely on predicted IQ could inadvertently raise the likelihood of unwanted conditions, because some genetic variants linked to higher intelligence also correlate with slightly elevated risk for autism or anorexia.This upscale testing differs sharply from germline editing. Tools like CRISPR can alter an embryo’s DNA, creating changes that are passed to future generations. While CRISPR is used in research and specific medical treatments for existing patients, it is not legally applied to embryos intended for pregnancy. Polygenic scoring, by contrast, does not alter DNA; it simply ranks embryos based on existing genetic differences. The ethical debate arises from marketing probabilistic scores as a way to “optimize” children, with access limited to those who can afford it.The director of the Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, notes that most routine fertility clinics “are not offering polygenic risk scoring of embryos” and typically advise against it because the data is “not robust enough.” Dr. Marcelle Cedars also warns of unintended consequences.“Many genes have overlapping ‘risks’; bipolar and creativity; autism and intelligence,” she tells the Sun. “You don’t know if selecting for one is selecting against another.”A Stanford law professor, Hank Greely, who studies ethical, legal, and social issues in the biosciences, agrees.“I am not worried about them producing super babies because we know almost nothing about genetic variations that increase intelligence. We know that good childhood nutrition, good childhood health, and good parental involvement increase intelligence; even the most ‘optimistic’ people about embryo selection think they might be able to make a difference of five IQ points, which, even if true, is very small,” he says. “And it may come with unexpected side effects. Maybe, for example, variations that are thought to add a few IQ points also increase schizophrenia risks or pancreatic cancer.”The Ethical DebateFor ethicists, this technology raises a difficult question. On the one hand, using genetics to prevent deadly diseases fits with protecting life and showing compassion. On the other, using the same tools to select traits such as intelligence or appearance risks turning children into commodities and giving the wealthy a new means to buy advantage, thereby threatening fairness and shared dignity.“If it did work, which it hasn’t been proven to, and may never be proven to, as brains are very complicated, then inequality would be my biggest worry,” says Mr. Greely. “Though I will note that rich kids already have a lot of advantages that we don’t regulate against.”According to a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family, Diana Thayer, “what started as assisting couples struggling with infertility has become a selection process for embryos, finding the desirable gene or combination of genes, or even worse, the possible editing of genes to get the baby you want.”“The process of picking a child and discarding the rest because one is more desirable than another smacks of supremacy and bigotry,” she tells the Sun. Religious voices also caution against treating conception like product design.“The public should be very concerned about the advent of ‘designer babies,’ and that is because we’ve been down this eugenics road before. Already, parents who learn that the woman is carrying a ‘defective’ baby are electing for an abortion,” the president of the Catholic League, Bill Donohue, tells the Sun. “This is a subject ripe for abuse. The rich and powerful will have the upper hand. There should be a moratorium on any future research in this area.”A Policy ProblemThis is not just a cultural debate — it is a policy dilemma. The risks of unchecked technology were starkly demonstrated in 2018, when a Chinese biophysicist, He Jiankui, announced the birth of twin girls whose embryos he had edited with CRISPR. His stated goal was HIV resistance, but the experiment was conducted in secret, without peer review or proven safety. The global response was one of condemnation, both for the health risks and the violation of ethical norms. He Jiankui was later imprisoned in China, but the episode left a lasting scar on the scientific community.In the United States, germline editing remains effectively blocked. Since 2015, Congress has prohibited the FDA from even accepting applications to create heritable changes in human embryos intentionally.But there is no comparable restriction on polygenic scoring in embryo selection. Companies can sell services ranking embryos for risks or traits without federal oversight. Regulation, for now, is being set by the market.Unlike Europe, where laws govern what conditions can be screened for, America takes a more laissez-faire approach. This allows rapid innovation and patient autonomy, but risks deepening social inequality by making genetic advantages a luxury and opening the door to eugenic-like practices.“In the U.S., there’s less oversight compared to other countries. The FDA doesn’t regulate embryo selection the way it regulates drugs. Germline editing would require proof that it’s safe, and right now it isn’t. There are approved cases of gene editing for treating diseases like sickle cell, where the benefit outweighs the risk,” says Mr. Risch. “But enhancement is different. The risk-benefit balance isn’t there.”Lawmakers face tough questions: Should access be limited strictly to preventing severe disease? Should Congress set boundaries on traits that may be screened, or leave that choice to the market? If access remains restricted to the affluent, will this technology deepen inequality in ways that cannot be undone?“Once technology exists, it’s very hard to contain it,” Mr. Risch said. “The marketplace often decides what gets traction, not regulators.”

Silicon Valley Is Gambling on a Burgeoning ‘Designer Baby’ Industry

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