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 Karin Hammarberg and Catherine Mills, BioNews | 10.13.2025
The Australian fertility industry has been rocked by several recent cases of embryo and sperm mix-ups. With a lack of transparency about what clinics do to prevent such errors recurring, trust and confidence in the industry and how it is...
By Rob Stein, NPR | 09.30.2025
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
By Daniel Hildebrand, The Humanist | 10.01.2025
When most people hear the word eugenics, they think of dusty history textbooks and black-and-white photographs: forced sterilizations in the early 20th century, pseudoscientific charts measuring skulls, the language of “fitness” used to justify violence and exclusion. It feels like...
By Paige Cockburn, ABC News | 10.02.2025
On Thursday afternoon, NSW Health announced a temporary exemption to the donor limit would come into effect in mid to late October to allow those affected to continue their treatments.
"Recognising the significant emotional, physical and financial impacts the misinterpretation...