Super Expensive Startup “Screening” Parents’ Embryos for IQ

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...