Eugenics 2.0: We’re at the Dawn of Choosing Embryos by Health, Height, and More
By Antonio Regalado,
MIT Tech Review
| 11. 01. 2017
Image via WikiMedia
Nathan Treff was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 24. It’s a disease that runs in families, but it has complex causes. More than one gene is involved. And the environment plays a role too.
So you don’t know who will get it. Treff’s grandfather had it, and lost a leg. But Treff’s three young kids are fine, so far. He’s crossing his fingers they won’t develop it later.
Now Treff, an in vitro fertilization specialist, is working on a radical way to change the odds. Using a combination of computer models and DNA tests, the startup company he’s working with, Genomic Prediction, thinks it has a way of predicting which IVF embryos in a laboratory dish would be most likely to develop type 1 diabetes or other complex diseases. Armed with such statistical scorecards, doctors and parents could huddle and choose to avoid embryos with failing grades.
IVF clinics already test the DNA of embryos to spot rare diseases, like cystic fibrosis, caused by defects in a single gene. But these “preimplantation” tests are poised for a dramatic leap...
Related Articles
By Dana Mattioli, The Wall Street Journal | 04.15.2025
Image "Elon Musk" by Debbie Rowe on Wikimedia Commons
licensed under CC by S.A. 3.0
Ashley St. Clair wanted to prove that Elon Musk was the father of her newborn baby.
But to ask the billionaire to take a paternity...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 04.24.2025
A Review of Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them by Diane M. Tober
A recent journalistic investigation of the global egg trade at Bloomberg put the industry’s unregulated practices and their exploitative implications back in the spotlight. Diane Tober’s book Eggonomics: The Global Market in Human Eggs and the Donors Who Supply Them, published in October of last year, delves even more deeply into the industry with a thorough examination of egg...
By Sarah Jones, Intelligencer | 04.17.2025
From the Natalism website
Elon Musk may not have appeared at the Natal Conference in Austin, Texas, this year, but he didn’t have to. The very concept of pronatalism owes its current prominence to him and his obsession with fertility...
By Staff [cites CGS' Katie Hasson], Radio New Zealand | 04.05.2025
At a time where some countries are struggling with low birth rates, the voices for pronatalism are getting louder. But it’s who’s sounding the call for more babies that has people talking.
Tech giant Elon Musk has fourteen children and...