Super Expensive Startup “Screening” Parents’ Embryos for IQ
By Maggie Harrison Dupré,
Futurism [cites CGS' Katie Hasson]
| 10. 19. 2024
A US-based startup called Heliospect Genomics is charging parents tens of thousands of dollars to "screen" embryos they conceive for their IQs, according to startling new reporting from The Guardian.
Details of the secretive startup were largely revealed by undercover video footage collected by a UK-based advocacy group called Hope Not Hate, with further research conducted by the Guardian. The covertly collected videos reveal company officials openly bragging that their controversial genetic screening tactics can boost a future child's IQ by upwards of six points.
To be clear, whether Heliospect's technology works as claimed remains to be seen. Though IQ is determined in part by genetics, there's not simply a gene for "smart" that can be turned off and on; rather, a person's IQ is influenced by an overlapping, intersecting array of dozens of different genes— not to mention that intelligence itself is a slippery and notoriously hard-to-measure concept.
And beyond the question of whether something like this could feasibly work as promised, there are obvious biomedical ethical concerns. It's not like these folks are reviewing embryos for...
Related Articles
By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 07.05.2025
Scientists are just a few years from creating viable human sex cells in the lab, according to an internationally renowned pioneer of the field, who says the advance could open up biology-defying possibilities for reproduction.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 07.16.2025
Scientists can protect children from being born with certain devastating genetic disorders by creating "three-parent" babies, according to the results of a landmark study released Wednesday.
British researchers used the experimental technique to help families have eight children who appear...
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.18.2025
This week we heard that eight babies have been born in the UK following an experimental form of IVF that involves DNA from three people. The approach was used to prevent women with genetic mutations from passing mitochondrial diseases to...
By Jessica Hamzelou, MIT Technology Review | 07.16.2025
Eight babies have been born in the UK thanks to a technology that uses DNA from three people: the two biological parents plus a third person who supplies healthy mitochondrial DNA. The babies were born to mothers who carry genes...