The founder of Nucleus, Kian Sadeghi, wrote that the “Have your best baby” ad campaign was intended to make people pause and wonder. Science, he wrote, has “sprinted ahead” of public awareness of technological possibility. “Have your best baby” is meant to shock and awe—and to suggest that what’s shocking today might be tomorrow’s ho-hum usual. [...]
The feeling that the Nucleus ads are aiming to evoke—"Wait, can I do that!? Are people doing that? Is this not taboo anymore? When did we start living in this future?”—reminded me of another time I was confronted by medical technology that has sprinted way ahead, faster than anyone but experts realized: When Kris Jenner revealed her new face. She even used similar language to the Nucleus ads. The now 70-year-old reality TV star and “momager” to her many famous Kardashian/Jenner offspring told Vogue Arabia that she had a new facelift because she wanted to be “the best version” of herself.
And the parallels between polygenic embryo selection and cosmetic surgery don’t stop there.
[...] You will never see Nucleus run an ad campaign that shows the gritty reality of IVF, which requires many daily needles, injecting hormones in one’s belly or thighs, followed by a doctor inserting a needle through one’s vagina. Side effects can range from mild (mood swings, bloating, fatigue) to severe conditions requiring hospitalization (ovaries leaking fluid, rapid weight gain, kidney failure).
Similarly, advertisements for “deep plane” facelifts, the procedure reportedly undergone by Kris Jenner, feature stunning “before and after” pictures showing patients looking remarkably younger. It’s a lot more difficult to find photographs of the procedure itself, because it involves, you know, taking someone’s face off. [...]
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An IVF-created embryo is not a baby, and polygenic risk scores are not a crystal ball showing the future physical health, or mental health, or intelligence, or personality of any embryo. What a prospective parent can “pick” is not a baby, but an embryo that has a particular combination of polygenic risk scores, [...]“Have the baby that results from the embryo that has a 12% lower risk of dropping out of college, but a 4% greater risk of a serious psychotic disorder, compared to the embryo selected at random” doesn’t make for very good ad copy, though.
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Embryo testing companies envision a future in which parents who conceive their children without medical intervention will feel about their child the way I sometimes feel about my aging body: regret at being saddled with an inferior product, self-blame at not having “fixed” it. A child’s differences, fragilities, flaws, and challenges will no longer be facts about a person, which you might grieve, accept, accommodate, ameliorate, treat, care for, or even celebrate. They will be choices, and the parent will be culpable for not choosing to avoid them.
[...]
I want people to be able to have children, if they want them, and to have them on their own terms. I value bodily autonomy. At the same time, I want to live in a society where everyone is recognized as deserving of and entitled to care, regardless of whether they “optimized” their career, diet, skin care, facial tautness—or their child’s genome. I don’t live in that society, and I fear that the possibility of polygenic embryo selection, even if most people don’t avail themselves of it, will further undermine the sense of solidarity necessary to work towards it.
They forgot to mention possible OHSS, ovarian torsion and death. Fun times. We recently read about the tragedy from parents who inadvertently selected for a "genetic mutation that dramatically...
Side effects can range from mild (mood swings, bloating, fatigue) to severe conditions requiring hospitalization (ovaries leaking fluid, rapid weight gain, kidney failure).
They forgot to mention possible OHSS, ovarian torsion and death. Fun times.
But the genes we know how to measure account for only a small part of the total variation in these outcomes
We recently read about the tragedy from parents who inadvertently selected for a "genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer". Some of these children had already had pediatric cancers and some have died.
Ethics of selection aside: parents are being deceived if they think these profit making labs know enough to be able to guarantee your child will be safe and healthy.
This vision of the future is most clear in the statements of Noor Siddiqui, the founder of Orchid Health. One characteristic post reads, “If you wouldn’t screen, fine. Just be honest: you’re okay with your kid potentially suffering for life so you can feel morally superior….or because you can’t be inconvenienced for 2 weeks to extract eggs and check for genetic issues before they develop.” Another reposts the claim that “In time it will be viewed as irresponsible to have kids naturally.”
Labs should be required to tell parents about the pediatric cancer case, and these kinds of statements should be completely illegal whatsoever.
I don't have the energy for a eugenics conversation this morning but I always wonder how those parents react to their kid being born with Cerebral Palsy or with anything with high support needs....
I don't have the energy for a eugenics conversation this morning but I always wonder how those parents react to their kid being born with Cerebral Palsy or with anything with high support needs. Or being injured in childhood.
That's very healthy to recognize what you have time and energy for, for sure. Maybe that's what more parents need to ask themselves: if they have the energy to be having the difficult questions.
That's very healthy to recognize what you have time and energy for, for sure. Maybe that's what more parents need to ask themselves: if they have the energy to be having the difficult questions.
Some parents are better than others, but I don’t see why they’d be different on average from other parents? Once the child is born, it’s not about potential children anymore. It’s about the child...
Some parents are better than others, but I don’t see why they’d be different on average from other parents? Once the child is born, it’s not about potential children anymore. It’s about the child you have.
They are probably richer than average though, which has all sorts of consequences.
I didn't say they'd necessarily be different, I said I wonder how they react. Someone who has spend a lot of money trying to avoid a disabled child or even a "less than ideal" child may be...
but I don’t see why they’d be different on average from other parents?
I didn't say they'd necessarily be different, I said I wonder how they react. Someone who has spend a lot of money trying to avoid a disabled child or even a "less than ideal" child may be disappointed by having a child they consider less than ideal.
Sperm donation isn’t IVF, but yeah, that’s another way to do it and a pretty bad failure. Also, IVF has its own issues. In the case of IVF where both parents are known, it seems like whichever...
Sperm donation isn’t IVF, but yeah, that’s another way to do it and a pretty bad failure. Also, IVF has its own issues.
In the case of IVF where both parents are known, it seems like whichever embryo is picked is a child that the parents could have had without embryo screening? It just changes the odds.
There's some overlaps. There's just sperm donation via artificial insemination, but there's also embryo selection using donor sperm. Both are done in the same kinds of fertility labs, and even...
There's some overlaps. There's just sperm donation via artificial insemination, but there's also embryo selection using donor sperm. Both are done in the same kinds of fertility labs, and even just artificial insemination has some selection for specific traits involved and unknown inadvertent side loaded side effects.
But my main point is, even selecting among both parents, we can't know what we don't know. By selecting for a few things we know, we might be inadvertently selecting for other things we don't know.
there might even be unanticipated “off-target” effects. Some of the genes associated with going further in school, for example, are also associated with a higher risk for schizophrenia.
It's fine to roll the dice naturally, and it's fine to roll the dice with tech. But I think it should be illegal for companies to say it's anything more than rolling a different colour set of dice. I don't have problem with the tech, but I have problem with the marketing angle: consumers need to be able to make informed decisions.
Later in the article, the author gives an Option A (capitalistic eugenics) or Option B (socialised eugenics) that "also guarantees health care to all people, period." Eugenics aside, I agree with...
Later in the article, the author gives an Option A (capitalistic eugenics) or Option B (socialised eugenics) that "also guarantees health care to all people, period." Eugenics aside, I agree with the author that people should just be able to have health care. The prospect of having a disabled child, a neurodivergent one, a shorter darker skinned flatter chested one (etc) would be less scary if we lived in a more supportive world.
(The “Have your best baby” ad campaign) is clearly targeted at people who do not yet have children, because having a child, in my experience, renders the idea of “best” nonsensical.
Optimistic, sadly. In GATTACA, the protagonist's parents went natural the first time, the father regretted it immediately and the mother said nothing, then they engineered their golden child next. There are also blended families where people already have kids but they feel like this time they'll do it with a new partner. Or they had kids but couldn't previously afford it. Or they had kids young but now they're old and the clinic sells them on the older parents means more disabilities angle. Or they had one of a particular sex and are now specifically targetting another. Or they had kids but since then some troubling family heritable traits have come forward or there's been an injury or illness so now they need donor gametes. Or any number of reasons really.
Not even God himself was able to create a child who went according to plan
I mostly like her writing, but I didn’t understand the stuff about eugenics. These definitions seem vague and unhelpful. I guess you can make up whatever definition you want, but it would probably...
I mostly like her writing, but I didn’t understand the stuff about eugenics. These definitions seem vague and unhelpful. I guess you can make up whatever definition you want, but it would probably be better to say whatever you want to say without using the word “eugenics” and see if that’s clearer.
Sorry, I was using the author's definition, when she said "Option #2 is less eugenic" I took it to mean she considers both to be the case, one less so than the other. But yes, it's a pretty heavy...
Sorry, I was using the author's definition, when she said "Option #2 is less eugenic" I took it to mean she considers both to be the case, one less so than the other. But yes, it's a pretty heavy term I could have left out if I wasn't specifically talking about it.
So the "Have Your Best Baby" advertising reads like the "Torment Nexus" meme as inspired by Gattaca.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
[...]
They forgot to mention possible OHSS, ovarian torsion and death. Fun times.
We recently read about the tragedy from parents who inadvertently selected for a "genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer". Some of these children had already had pediatric cancers and some have died.
Ethics of selection aside: parents are being deceived if they think these profit making labs know enough to be able to guarantee your child will be safe and healthy.
Labs should be required to tell parents about the pediatric cancer case, and these kinds of statements should be completely illegal whatsoever.
I don't have the energy for a eugenics conversation this morning but I always wonder how those parents react to their kid being born with Cerebral Palsy or with anything with high support needs. Or being injured in childhood.
Bleh
That's very healthy to recognize what you have time and energy for, for sure. Maybe that's what more parents need to ask themselves: if they have the energy to be having the difficult questions.
Some parents are better than others, but I don’t see why they’d be different on average from other parents? Once the child is born, it’s not about potential children anymore. It’s about the child you have.
They are probably richer than average though, which has all sorts of consequences.
I didn't say they'd necessarily be different, I said I wonder how they react. Someone who has spend a lot of money trying to avoid a disabled child or even a "less than ideal" child may be disappointed by having a child they consider less than ideal.
Sperm donation isn’t IVF, but yeah, that’s another way to do it and a pretty bad failure. Also, IVF has its own issues.
In the case of IVF where both parents are known, it seems like whichever embryo is picked is a child that the parents could have had without embryo screening? It just changes the odds.
There's some overlaps. There's just sperm donation via artificial insemination, but there's also embryo selection using donor sperm. Both are done in the same kinds of fertility labs, and even just artificial insemination has some selection for specific traits involved and unknown inadvertent side loaded side effects.
But my main point is, even selecting among both parents, we can't know what we don't know. By selecting for a few things we know, we might be inadvertently selecting for other things we don't know.
It's fine to roll the dice naturally, and it's fine to roll the dice with tech. But I think it should be illegal for companies to say it's anything more than rolling a different colour set of dice. I don't have problem with the tech, but I have problem with the marketing angle: consumers need to be able to make informed decisions.
Later in the article, the author gives an Option A (capitalistic eugenics) or Option B (socialised eugenics) that "also guarantees health care to all people, period." Eugenics aside, I agree with the author that people should just be able to have health care. The prospect of having a disabled child, a neurodivergent one, a shorter darker skinned flatter chested one (etc) would be less scary if we lived in a more supportive world.
Optimistic, sadly. In GATTACA, the protagonist's parents went natural the first time, the father regretted it immediately and the mother said nothing, then they engineered their golden child next. There are also blended families where people already have kids but they feel like this time they'll do it with a new partner. Or they had kids but couldn't previously afford it. Or they had kids young but now they're old and the clinic sells them on the older parents means more disabilities angle. Or they had one of a particular sex and are now specifically targetting another. Or they had kids but since then some troubling family heritable traits have come forward or there's been an injury or illness so now they need donor gametes. Or any number of reasons really.
I'll save my "umm, ackshually" for another time.
I mostly like her writing, but I didn’t understand the stuff about eugenics. These definitions seem vague and unhelpful. I guess you can make up whatever definition you want, but it would probably be better to say whatever you want to say without using the word “eugenics” and see if that’s clearer.
Sorry, I was using the author's definition, when she said "Option #2 is less eugenic" I took it to mean she considers both to be the case, one less so than the other. But yes, it's a pretty heavy term I could have left out if I wasn't specifically talking about it.
Sure, that's fine. I used the word "you" but I was disagreeing more with her usage of the term. Sorry about that!