Nucleus Genomics’ embryo selection for height and IQ brings back eugenics, writes a professor with a rare muscle disease
Nucleus Genomics’ embryo selection for height and IQ brings back eugenics, writes a professor with a rare muscle disease
On October 27, The Guardian published an essay by Jan Grue, a professor at the University of Oslo. He was responding to the company’s posters in the New York subway: “Have the best baby,” “Height is 80% genetic,” and “IQ is 50% genetic.” For people undergoing IVF, the company analyzes DNA from up to 20 embryos for disease, height, IQ, eye color, and longevity.
Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at three and used to imagine a version of himself without the disease. He later realized that the gene responsible could be detected in an embryo, meaning that this imagined counterpart would be someone else, born in his place. Genetic testing did not confirm his diagnosis: Grue has another, even rarer disease, for which there will be no treatment. Losing both his diagnosis and his hope of treatment brought grief tinged with relief and a sense of freedom: this was his own life. His imagined counterpart returned when he read about the posters.
Grue identifies the philosopher Julian Savulescu as a defender of “liberal eugenics,” meaning selection based on parental choice. In 2005, Savulescu told The Guardian:
“In practice, we engage in eugenics when we screen for Down syndrome and other chromosomal or genetic abnormalities. We do not call it ‘eugenics,’ as the Nazis did, because it is based on choice.”
Eugenics was a project of the nation-state in the 20th century and has become a logical extension of capitalist individualism in the 21st century, Grue argues. The state manages its population to promote economic growth, health, and military strength. When citizens optimize their own families as small populations for health and productivity, they spare the state some of that work.
Grue describes the figures on the posters as heritability estimates: they indicate the proportion of variation in height or IQ within a group that is explained by genetic differences, yet sound like a promise that parents can choose their child’s height and intelligence. On September 11, NAD, the US advertising industry’s self-regulatory body, recommended that Nucleus modify or remove claims on its website and Instagram that its IVF+ service can accurately identify which embryo will become the tallest and most intelligent child. The company’s data did not establish the accuracy of such selection. Nucleus is appealing the decision.
The meaning of “best” reflects the prejudices of its time, Grue writes. Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics,” presented the privileges of wealth and class as innate qualities. In liberal eugenics, the ideal person closely resembles the ideal worker: intelligent, efficient, and unlikely to take sick leave. The biologist Adam Rutherford points out that selecting for one trait means selecting against another. Under this ideal, Grue argues, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses become unwanted.
Grue regards disability as a real disadvantage and would accept a treatment. He sees the main harm in the idea that an ideal body can be defined, measured, and created. That idea establishes a framework in which people torment both their children and themselves by asking why they are not closer to perfection. As more traits are measured, ranked, and diagnosed, human diversity becomes something akin to disability, Grue argues. The boundaries of disability depend on society: without wheelchairs and accessible environments, mobility impairments are orders of magnitude more limiting.
Grue proposes “building better societies rather than better people” and rejecting the idea that only treatment or embryo optimization gives life value. He sees eugenics as a pursuit of control and predictability. His alternative to the “best baby” is the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s concept of “natality”: each birth brings something entirely unique into existence and creates the world anew.