Breeding for IQ

IN THE Operation Varsity Blues scandal of 2019, 50 wealthy parents were charged with trying to get their children into elite universities through fraudulent means. The story dramatically demonstrated the lengths to which some parents will go to ensure their children’s acceptance into places like Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and USC. Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, bribed athletic coaches to recruit their children for sports they did not play. Actress Felicity Huffman and private equity mogul William E. McGlashan Jr. were among the parents who paid to falsify their children’s SAT and ACT test scores. Those who were caught faced criminal charges, yet the scandal also shed light on the perfectly legal tactics used by wealthy parents to get their children into elite institutions, such as endowing buildings or hiring expensive consultants.

The Pennsylvania couple Malcolm and Simone Collins have taken a different approach. For their two daughters, Titan Invictus and Industry Americus, the Collinses used eugenics. Titan and Industry are both under three years old, so it is too early to tell whether the experiment...