Latest news with #Herasight
The Independent
6 days ago
- Business
- The Independent
Silicon Valley executives are spending up to $50,000 to screen embryos
Silicon Valley tech executives are reportedly paying up to $50,000 for genetic-testing services that promise to screen embryos for IQ. These services aim to help parents select embryos for in vitro fertilization (IVF) to produce 'smart offspring'. Companies like Nucleus Genomics and Herasight are publicly offering these IQ prediction services, with prices ranging from around $6,000 to $50,000. High-end matchmakers note a rise in tech CEOs seeking intelligent partners, specifically to have 'smart offspring'. Critics raise significant ethical concerns about polygenic embryo screening (PES), including fairness, accessibility only to the wealthy, and the potential for creating a 'genetically super caste'.
New York Post
6 days ago
- Business
- New York Post
Silicon Valley parents spend thousands to screen embryos in search of ‘baby geniuses': report
Silicon Valley parents are shelling out as much as $50,000 to screen their embryos — to figure out which is most likely to grow into a 'baby genius,' according to a report. Some are even pushing a eugenics program to birth an entire generation of hand-picked brilliant babies in hopes they'll turn out clever enough to save humanity from the threat of artificial intelligence. It might sound like an episode of 'The Twilight Zone,' but high-performing babies are a growing obsession among wealthy tech executives – and they're willing to pay big bucks for it, according to the Wall Street Journal. Advertisement 4 High-performing babies are a growing obsession among wealthy tech executives in Silicon Valley. Getty Images/iStockphoto Startups Nucleus Genomics and Herasight charge $6,000 and up to $50,000, respectively, for their genetic testing of embryos – including IQ predictions – for couples using in vitro fertilization. 'Silicon Valley, they love IQ,' Kian Sadeghi, founder of Nucleus Genomics, told the Journal. 'You talk to mom and pop America…not every parent is like, I want my kid to be, you know, a scholar at Harvard. Like, no, I want my kid to be like LeBron James.' Advertisement Simone and Malcolm Collins, leaders of a pronatalist movement advocating for larger families, work in tech and venture capital and have four children through IVF. Simone said they used Herasight to choose the embryo she is currently pregnant with because of its low cancer risk – though they were also thrilled to learn that he was in 'the 99th percentile per his polygenic score in likelihood of having really exceptionally high intelligence.' They plan to give him the middle name Demeisen, after a character from the science-fiction novel 'Surface Detail' – who runs a warship called Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints. Advertisement A Bay Area couple have chosen to pursue IVF despite its costs and challenges in an attempt to root out the risk of Alzheimer's and cancer that runs in their families. 4 Startups Nucleus Genomics and Herasight charge thousands of dollars for their genetic testing of embryos. Getty Images But the couple, both software engineers who call themselves 'fairly typical for computer people,' also care about the IQ predictions. They used a Google spreadsheet to break down the results from Herasight, ranking the importance of each trait. Advertisement 'What percent additional lifetime risk for Alzheimer's balances a 1% decrease in lifetime risk for bipolar?' they wrote. 'How much additional risk of ADHD cancels out against 10 extra IQ points?' The embryo with the highest total score – which also had the third-highest predicted IQ – became their daughter. IQ testing has become the backbone of a new eugenics movement led by Tsvi Benson-Tilsen. Benson-Tilsen, the son of a rabbi and mathematician, said he spent seven years researching ways to keep AI from destroying humanity – before concluding it wasn't possible. 4 IQ testing has become the backbone of a new eugenics movement led by Tsvi Benson-Tilsen. – Now he's arguing that widespread genetic testing can be used to create a generation of geniuses to save humankind from AI. Advertisement 'My intuition is it's one of our best hopes,' said Benson-Tilsen, who co-founded the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit supporting the movement. He said he wants to 'enable parents to make genomic choices' – arguing that this element of choice is a key difference from the twisted history of government eugenics programs under Nazi Germany. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! In Silicon Valley, it's already mainstream for tech executives to shell out thousands of dollars on professional matchmakers or send their kids to pricey preschools that require entrance exams. Advertisement 'Right now I have one, two, three tech CEOs and all of them prefer Ivy League,' Jennifer Donnelly, a high-end matchmaker who charges up to $500,000, told the Journal. 'They aren't just thinking about love, they're thinking about genetics, the educational outcomes and the legacy.' 4 It's questionable whether these IQ predictions are even accurate, according to experts. Getty Images/iStockphoto This obsession with 'genetic optimization' has sounded off alarm bells for bioethicists, who warn the testing is unfair. Advertisement 'It is a great science fiction plot: The rich people create a genetically super caste that takes over and the rest of us are proles,' Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University, told the Journal. It's questionable whether these IQ predictions are even accurate – likely only able to make a three- or four-point difference in a child's IQ, according to Shai Carmi, associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 'It's not going to be something to make your child a prodigy.' Advertisement Parents who turn to the technology could also face unintended consequences, like selecting other traits that come alongside the likelihood for high IQ. 'If you're selecting on what you think is the highest IQ embryo, you could also be, at the same time unwittingly selecting on an embryo with the highest Autism Spectrum Disorder risk,' said Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School.
The Independent
6 days ago
- Science
- The Independent
Tech execs are paying top dollar to breed smarter babies, report claims
Top Silicon Valley tech executives are forking out thousands of dollars in a bid to breed America's smartest babies, a new report claims. Parents and 'tech futurists' are paying up to $50,000 for a new genetic-testing service that promises to screen embryos for IQ, according to the Wall Street Journal. Jennifer Donnelly, who charges up to $500,000 for her services as a high-end matchmaker told the Journal she has seen a notable rise in the amount of tech execs who are looking to pair up with intelligent partners to subsequently get 'smart offspring.' 'Right now I have one, two, three tech CEOs and all of them prefer Ivy League,' Donnelly said. Startups including Nucleus Genomics and Herasight have started to publicly offer IQ predictions, based on genetic tests, to help people select which embryos to use for in vitro fertilization, The Journal reports. In the Bay Area, popularity for the exclusive services is high, with testing priced around $6,000 at Nucleus and up to $50,000 at Herasight. Last month, Elon Musk expressed his apparent enthusiasm in the idea when he responded 'Cool' to a post about Herasight. Polygenic embryo screening – PES – is a service that is only currently available commercially, and tests embryos for complex conditions, traits, and risks attributed to common conditions, such as diabetes, cancers and psychiatric disorders, among others, as well as for traits like height and intelligence quotient (IQ), according to the National Institutes of Health. Critics have raised questions about the ethics of such testing. Potential issues include the oversight over which conditions are tested, who chooses them, what level of uncertainty in the results is acceptable and whether the service only be used by those who can afford it. 'Is it fair? This is something a lot of people worry about,' said Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University to The Journal. 'It is a great science fiction plot: The rich people create a genetically super caste that takes over and the rest of us are proles.' And Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School, added: 'I think they have a perception that they are smart and they are accomplished, and they deserve to be where they are because they have 'good genes. 'Now they have a tool where they think that they can do the same thing in their kids as well, right?'
