“How much would you pay for a smarter baby?”
That’s the question an article in The Economist is asking as it highlights boutique IVF clinics, part of a “burgeoning industry aspir[ing] to reshape the way humans are made” by allowing parents to screen their embryos for IQ, height, and eye color.
These start-ups are front and center in the commodification of children, turning human beings into products so wealthy parents can—according to their advertising on the New York subway—“have [their] best baby.”
Of course, this kind of specialized screening is out of reach (thankfully!) for most couples using IVF, as the screening currently costs up to $50,000. But these start-ups believe that AI and other technological advancements will soon make it more affordable. And if that’s the case, parents are going to use it. The article notes, “demand for such tests could be substantial.”
Nearly three-quarters of American IVF patients say they would use such tests if free.
. . .
A survey published in 2023 in Science found that 43% of all IVF participants would use polygenic screening to increase their child’s chance of getting into an elite university, provided it were safe and free. [Safe for whom? Certainly not for the babies who are discarded simply for potentially having a lower IQ than their siblings!] A third said the same for genetic editing.
These survey results should be utterly shocking—we are talking about parents deciding which of their children are born and which either become medical waste or are frozen indefinitely simply based on IQ, height, eye color, or future health risk. How evil!
These tests are just the next step in the commodification of children. Listen to how the men and women behind these start-ups talk about these services (keep in mind these are babies—real human beings made in God’s image—they are talking about):
Late last year New Yorkers noticed a series of strange advertisements on the subway. “Have your best baby,” one promised. “IQ is 50% genetic,” noted another. Predictably, they stirred controversy. Yet Kian Sadeghi of Nucleus, the embryo-screening startup behind them, was pleased. “This is a mass-market product. What’s a better way of showing that it’s a mass-market product than the subway?” (emphasis added)
. . .
Noor Siddiqui of Orchid, a competitor, likes to say that “sex is for fun; embryo screening is for babies.”
. . .
As for ethics, Mr Asparouhov argues that all parents-to-be engage in a form of genetic selection when they choose a partner. “If this is eugenics, then so is Hinge,” he argues. [Of course, he’s ignoring that there’s a big difference between embryo screening and dating websites in that when you “swipe left” on someone on a dating app, you aren’t killing them or indefinitely putting them into a freezer!]
Or listen to what one parent who used this technology shared:
“Most of my professional career I’ve been a product manager in tech, and so in some ways this is just like another product to manage,” he says. . . . “All I could do is look at the results for my six embryos and say: ‘Okay, it kind of seems like this one is better.’” (emphasis added)
Yes, he looked at his six children and then picked the one that looked the best, just like he was managing some kind of tech product. One wonders what happened to the other five children who didn’t look as good to him.
As I said, this kind of boutique screening is currently only available for the wealthy, but that doesn’t mean the average IVF user isn’t also screening their embryos. They are, just not to this degree. As the article explains,
Some screening is already common among IVF patients. One example is PGT-A, which checks embryos have the right number of chromosomes, and which some studies claim lowers the miscarriage risk (many experts are sceptical). Certain clinics also offer PGT-M, which checks for disorders caused by a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s.
Babies who have the wrong number of chromosomes (e.g., children with Down syndrome), have a high miscarriage risk, or will have a disorder like cystic fibrosis are typically never given a chance to live; they are routinely discarded. As I shared in a blog post last year, more babies are discarded through IVF than children killed in abortion in the US.
Of course, those discussing this new technology and these screenings never mention what happens to the embryos that “don’t make the grade.” Consider how the testing is framed as “reducing risk”: “It claims that, if it tests ten embryos for a couple where both parents have type-2 diabetes, it can reduce their child’s absolute risk of developing the condition by 12-20 percentage points, from a baseline of 40-60%.”
But they aren’t reducing a child’s risk of diabetes. They are killing (murdering) the babies that have a higher risk of diabetes and only allowing the baby that looks the least likely to develop that condition to live. That’s evil! Each of those 10 embryos is a person made in God’s image, not a commodity to be chosen for a chance at life or discarded because of his or her genetics.
Consider also the ramifications of this in parenting. Imagine you paid $50,000 to ensure your lab-made baby would have a high IQ and be healthy and attractive. What if all the hype proves false (according to The Economist, the science behind these screenings might not even be sound) or because of environment or personality, the child simply doesn’t live up to the parent’s lofty expectations? What will that do to the parent-child relationship? After all, that parent paid “good money” for this child, and he or she isn’t living up to the promises. That’s a recipe for disaster!
Children are not commodities or products to be genetically manipulated according to adult desires. Children are people, made in the image of God with inherent dignity and value right from fertilization.
It is God who fearfully and wonderfully knits each child together just as He wants them to be—IQ, eye color, height, diabetes risk, and all. We must stand up and defend these children who are being so callously discarded.
“Open your mouth, judge righteously, And render justice to the afflicted and needy.” (Proverbs 31:9)
