I am slowly re-watching the X-Files with a friend of mine who was too young for the series when it first aired.
On Sunday evening, we watched an episode about a series of killings of sideshow artists within a circus community. In less PC days, they would have been labelled the “circus freaks.”
Agent Scully was speaking about the autopsy she had performed on one of those killed. “Well, his body possesses some anatomical discrepancies,” she said. “Some offshoots of the oesophagus and trachea that almost seem umbilical in nature. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“And you never will again,” quipped another of the performers. “Twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the siamese twins and the alligator-skinned people, but you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite or a not-so-high cheek bone. You see, I’ve seen the future.”
Three decades after the episode, the “future” described appears to have arrived.
This month, New York company Nucleus Genomics launched its “Nucleus Embryo” service described on its website as enabling parents undergoing IVF “to analyse and compare up to 20 embryos across over 900 hereditary conditions and 40 additional analyses beyond basic viability, spanning cancers, chronic conditions, appearance, cognitive ability, mental health, and more.”
The way the technology works is that prospective parents can visit any IVF clinic and then upload the raw data on embryo analysis received from the clinic to the Nucleus Embryo platform, which will analyse the data and allow parents to compare their embryos based not only likelihood of inherited diseases or disabilities, but also on characteristics like IQ, eye colour, hair colour, height and body mass index.
The company also confirmed that, for “the first time in human history, a company has openly partnered with a couple to help them optimise their embryos based on intelligence.”
In a long-form interview published this week, Nucleus Genomics founder and CEO Kian Sadeghi, defended the technology against claims of eugenics. Using both height and IQ as examples, Sadeghi said that “the extreme enough version of any trait is a disease” and argued that any line between trait and disease was arbitrary.
He went further to say that parents make many choices to ensure their children have the best opportunities in life.
“I don’t see a difference between saying, “I want to optimise my embryo” and when the child’s born, you want to optimise every aspect of them. You want them to get the best education, you want them to be on the best sports team, you want them to have the best friends. It’s this parental optimisation of your child; genetics is just another tool in the toolkit.”
While the argument might sound attractive on its face, it masks the inversion of the parent-child relationship and notion that it is parents who make sacrifices in order to give their children the best possible chance at life. Instead, it is their unborn children who are making the sacrifices. Sadeghi illustrates this shift in repeatedly referring to “customers” or “consumers” rather than parents.
The technology goes far beyond the initially intended use of IVF for infertile couples only, or of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for therapeutic reasons alone.
While saddening, it was also predictable.
Writing back in 1989, even before he was a priest, our own Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP wrote that IVF could be used for eugenic policies “by selection of preferred characteristics (‘tall blonde blue-eyed intelligent males’, etc.).”
While the Nucleus Embryo technology might make this statement from the future archbishop appear prophetic, he was just pointing out the logical end to the combining of artificial reproduction with genetic testing.
While the program is not available in Australia yet, and using IVF for non-therapeutic reasons is not permitted here, there is a push to ease restrictions.
Also this week, Californian doctor Daniel Potter is in Australia, doing the media circuit to push for our regulations to change to allow IVF to be used for sex-selection, the first step in the push for “embryo optimisation.” Giving in to seemingly small steps like sex-selection for “family balancing” purposes will, before long, bring us to the other characteristics in the Nucleus Genomics portfolio.
And that’s not where this ends, because if choosing embryos based on certain characteristics becomes widespread, IVF will become normative for procreation.
“I really do think in the future IVF won’t even be a thing that’s different,” Sadeghi comments. “It’s just going to be how people have children.”
“What’s going to happen is that it’s going to become so much cheaper… having sex to have kids, I do think it’s going to eventually be an archaic thing.
“I do believe that, and I actually think genetic technology is, along with AI, the single most consequential technological evolution ever.”
Lord, have mercy.
