American start-up Heliospect Genomics is charging wealthy parents-to-be up to $50,000 to screen their embryos for IQ and other desirable traits.
Wish you could ensure your unborn child has a higher-than-average IQ? Well, apparently now you can, with the help of genetic enhancement technology. This is controversial territory, as it tends to normalize the idea of superior” and “inferior” humans,, but according to undercover video footage obtained by the campaign group Hope Not Hate, at least one genomic prediction company has begun selling its services to parents who can afford them. Heliospect Genomics has apparently already offered its services to over a dozen parents undergoing in-vitro fertilization, charging them up to $50,000 to screen 100 embryos for IQ and other traits and boasting that their technology could help select children with IQ scores six points higher than those conceived naturally.
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Footage obtained by Hope Not Hate and reviewed by The Guardian appears to show Heliospect Genomics employees pitching the company services to prospective clients, claiming that they could screen up to 100 embryos based on “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants”, including sex and height, as well as risk of obesity or risk of mental health problems.
News of the controversial service went viral last month, with several geneticists and bioethicists saying that it raised numerous moral and medical issues. Some argued that it reinforced the idea that social inequality is related to biological causes rather than social ones, while others simply said that it is a grey area that the general public hasn’t even had the chance to really think about.
Asked to comment, a Heliospect Genomics spokesperson said that the US startup is currently in “stealth mode” and still developing its, but added that it is preparing for a public launch. The company also stated that it would not condone industrial-scale egg or embryo production or elite selection, and would not offer testing for “dark triad” traits or beauty.
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“All we mean by liberal eugenics is that parents should be free and maybe even encouraged to use technology to improve their children’s prospects once it’s available,’ Jonathan Anomaly, an academic on the board of Heliospect Genomics, said.
“Everyone can have all the children they want, and they can have children that are basically disease-free; it’s going to be great,” Michael Christensen, Heliospect’s CEO, and a former financial markets trader said during a November 2023 video call recorded by a Hope Not Hate researcher.
Apart from the controversy around “designer babies, Heliospect Genomics also raised concerns about the way it sources data, with several outlets reporting that its prediction tools are based on data from the UK Biobank, a publicly funded genetic repository mainly used for health-related research.
