{"id":81703,"date":"2025-08-14T08:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/81703\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T08:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:12:11","slug":"silicon-valley-parents-screen-embryos-in-search-of-baby-geniuses-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/81703\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley parents screen embryos in search of ‘baby geniuses’: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley parents are shelling out as much as $50,000 to screen their embryos \u2014 to figure out which is most likely to grow into a \u201cbaby genius,\u201d according to a report.<\/p>\n

Some are even pushing a eugenics program to birth an entire generation of hand-picked brilliant babies in hopes they\u2019ll turn out clever enough to save humanity from the threat of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

It might sound like an episode of \u201cThe Twilight Zone,\u201d but high-performing babies are a growing obsession among wealthy tech executives \u2013 and they\u2019re willing to pay big bucks for it, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

High-performing babies are a growing obsession among wealthy tech executives in Silicon Valley. Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

Startups Nucleus Genomics and Herasight charge $6,000 and up to $50,000, respectively, for their genetic testing of embryos \u2013 including IQ predictions \u2013 for couples using in vitro fertilization.<\/p>\n

\u201cSilicon Valley, they love IQ,\u201d Kian Sadeghi, founder of Nucleus Genomics, told the Journal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk to mom and pop America\u2026not 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Simone said they used Herasight to choose the embryo she is currently pregnant with because of its low cancer risk \u2013 though they were also thrilled to learn that he was in \u201cthe 99th percentile per his polygenic score in likelihood of having really exceptionally high intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

They plan to give him the middle name Demeisen, after a character from the science-fiction novel \u201cSurface Detail\u201d \u2013 who runs a warship called Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints.<\/p>\n

A Bay Area couple have chosen to pursue IVF despite its costs and challenges in an attempt to root out the risk of Alzheimer\u2019s and cancer that runs in their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Startups Nucleus Genomics and Herasight charge thousands of dollars for their genetic testing of embryos. Getty Images<\/p>\n

But the couple, both software engineers who call themselves \u201cfairly typical for computer people,\u201d also care about the IQ predictions.<\/p>\n

They used a Google spreadsheet to break down the results from Herasight, ranking the importance of each trait.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat percent additional lifetime risk for Alzheimer\u2019s balances a 1% decrease in lifetime risk for bipolar?\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much additional risk of ADHD cancels out against 10 extra IQ points?\u201d<\/p>\n

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The embryo with the highest total score \u2013 which also had the third-highest predicted IQ \u2013 became their daughter.<\/p>\n

IQ testing has become the backbone of a new eugenics movement led by Tsvi Benson-Tilsen.<\/p>\n

Benson-Tilsen, the son of a rabbi and mathematician, said he spent seven years researching ways to keep AI from destroying humanity \u2013 before concluding it wasn\u2019t possible.<\/p>\n

IQ testing has become the backbone of a new eugenics movement led by Tsvi Benson-Tilsen. nevodka.com \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s arguing that widespread genetic testing can be used to create a generation of geniuses to save humankind from AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy intuition is it\u2019s one of our best hopes,\u201d said Benson-Tilsen, who co-founded the Berkeley Genomics Project, a nonprofit supporting the movement.<\/p>\n

He said he wants to \u201cenable parents to make genomic choices\u201d \u2013 arguing that this element of choice is a key difference from the twisted history of government eugenics programs under Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n

Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post\u2019s signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In Silicon Valley, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now I have one, two, three tech CEOs and all of them prefer Ivy League,\u201d Jennifer Donnelly, a high-end matchmaker who charges up to $500,000, told the Journal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey aren\u2019t just thinking about love, they\u2019re thinking about genetics, the educational outcomes and the legacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s questionable whether these IQ predictions are even accurate, according to experts. Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

This obsession with \u201cgenetic optimization\u201d has sounded off alarm bells for bioethicists, who warn the testing is unfair.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a great science fiction plot: The rich people create a genetically super caste that takes over and the rest of us are proles,\u201d Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University, told the Journal.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s questionable whether these IQ predictions are even accurate \u2013 likely only able to make a three- or four-point difference in a child\u2019s IQ, according to Shai Carmi, associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be something to make your child a prodigy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents who turn to the technology could also face unintended consequences, like selecting other traits that come alongside the likelihood for high IQ.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re 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,\u201d said Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley parents are shelling out as much as $50,000 to screen their embryos \u2014 to figure out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[6729,28,200,57151,28535,79,2793],"class_list":["post-81703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-babies","tag-business","tag-genetics","tag-genius","tag-ivf","tag-science","tag-silicon-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}