TL;DR
Embryo screening and gene editing let wealthy parents pay to choose their children's genetic traits, but scientists say the methods are unproven and risk deepening genetic inequality — and human understanding of genes is too shallow to justify the 'optimization'.
While pregnant with her second child, the author took a prenatal test. Months later, a new service appeared: polygenic embryo screening. It ranks IVF embryos, estimating their risk of disease, height, IQ, even eye colour. The first company was Genomic Prediction, launched in 2019, with Sam Altman as an early investor.
A genetic report card
Nucleus Genomics advertises like a phone app showing a report card titled 'Kids' most likely traits'. Height, eye colour, IQ +2 points. Want it? Pay up. Screening one embryo costs $2,500, on top of an IVF cycle (about $15,000). Nucleus bundles both into a four-month plan for around $40,000.
But the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said in 2025 that this screening is unproven and should not be used clinically yet. Nucleus says its work is 'validated, peer-reviewed research'. Beyond screening, gene editing is advancing. Columbia University researchers used base editing to modify early human embryos far more accurately than CRISPR, the lead researcher says — but it is not ready for reproduction.
Picking a child or a lottery ticket?
The catch: we don't know what we are selecting. Genes don't map neatly onto traits. High IQ can come with anxiety and allergies (geneticists call this pleiotropy). The author is both autistic and intellectually gifted; her strengths and struggles may share genetic roots.
Also, these predictions are mostly built on European data and lose accuracy for other ancestries. Anthropologists told the author that screening is culture changing evolution: humans have always shaped their gene pool by choosing mates, but now the wealthy can accelerate that process.
The author worries this could create a new genetic class, where families who can pay buy advantages others can't. One researcher said lasting effects require the rich to marry only among themselves, but the market doesn't need that — just enough buyers while others rely on chance.
When screening becomes the default
Denmark offered free Down syndrome screening; the number of children born with it fell by half, no one forced it, most parents chose. After China's one-child policy, parents favoured sons; today there are over 30 million more men than women. No directive, just collective choice.
Embryo screening differs: it is expensive, and results are probabilities, not certainties. Regulators lag: a US rider bars the FDA from reviewing heritable gene-editing trials; the UK has a strong authority but cannot stop people going abroad. Gene editing has already happened once — He Jiankui made the first gene-edited babies in 2018, went to prison briefly, but those girls will pass changes to their children.
The author concludes that technology lets cultural preferences get 'written into' genes within one generation, and no one has collectively decided if that is acceptable. 'Some families will make a choice and the rest will live with whatever consequences come.'
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