Embryo Selection Company Herasight Goes All In On Eugenics

Multiple commercial companies are now offering polygenic embryo selection on a wide range of traits, including genetic predictors of behavior and IQ. I’ve previously written about the methodological unknowns around this technology but I haven’t commented on the ethics. I think having a child is a very personal decision and it’s not my place to tell people how to do it. But the new embryo selection company, Herasight, has started advocating for eugenic societal norms that I find disturbing and worth raising alarm over. Because this is a fraught topic, I’ll start with some basic definitions.

What is eugenics?

Eugenics is an ideology that advocates for conditioning reproductive rights on the perceived genetic quality of the parents. Francis Galton, the father of eugenics, declared that eugenics’ “first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being”. This goal was to be achieved through social stigma and, if necessary, by force. The Eugenics Education Society, for instance, advocated for education, segregation, and — “perhaps” — compulsory sterilization to prevent the “unfit and degenerate” from reproducing:

A core component of defining “the unfit” was heredity. Eugenicists are not just interested in improving people’s phenotypes — a goal that is widely shared by modern society — but the future genotypic distribution. The genetic stock. This is why eugenic policies historically focus on sterilization, including the sterilization of unaffected relatives who harbor genotype but not phenotype. If someone commits a crime, they face time in prison for their actions, but under eugenic reasoning their law-abiding sibling or child is also suspect and should be stigmatized (or forcefully prevented) from passing on deficient genetic material.

A simple two-part test for eugenics is then: (1) Is it concerned with the future genetic stock? (2) Is it advocating for restricted reproduction, either through stigma or force, for those deemed genetically inferior?

Is embryo selection eugenics?

I have publicly resisted applying the “eugenics” label to embryo selection writ large and I continue to do so. Embryo selection is a tool and its use is morally complex. A couple can choose to have embryo screening for a variety of reasons ranging from frivolous (“we want to have a blue eyed baby”) to widely supported (“we carry a recessive mutation that would be fatal in our baby”), none of which have eugenic intent. Embryo selection can even be an anti-eugenic tool, as in the case of high-risk couples who have already decided against having children. If embryo selection technology allows them to lower the risk to a comfortable level and have a child they would otherwise have avoided, then the outcome is literally the opposite of eugenic selection: “unfit” individuals (at least as they see themselves) now have an incentive to produce more offspring than they would have. In practice, IVF remains a physically and emotionally demanding procedure, and my guess is that individual eugenic intentions — the desire to select out unfit embryos with the specific motivation of improving the “genetic stock” of the population — are exceedingly rare.

Is Herasight advocating for eugenics?

While I do not think embryo selection is eugenic in itself, like any reproductive technology, it can be wielded for eugenic purposes. The new embryo selection company Herasight, in my opinion, is advocating for exactly that. To understand why, it is useful to first understand the theories put forth by Herasight’s director of scientific research and communication Jonathan Anomaly (in case you’re wondering, that is a chosen last name). Anomaly is a self-proclaimed eugenicist [Update: Anomaly has clarified that this description was not provided by him and he requested that it be removed]:

Prior to joining Herasight, Anomaly wrote extensively on the ethics of embryo selection, notably in a 2018 article titled “Defending eugenics”. How does Anomaly defend eugenics? First, he reiterates the classic position that eugenics is a resistance to the uncontrolled reproduction of the “unfit” (emphasis mine, throughout):

Darwin argued that social welfare programs for the poor and sick are a natural expression of our sympathy, but also a danger to future populations if they encourage people with serious congenital diseases and heritable traits like low levels of impulse control, intelligence, or empathy to reproduce at higher rates than other people in the population. Darwin feared that in developed nations “the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members”

Anomaly goes on to sympathize with Darwin’s position and that of the classic eugenicists, arguing that “While Darwin’s language is shocking to contemporary readers, we should take him seriously”, later that “there is increasingly good evidence that Darwin was right to worry about demographic trends in developed countries”, and that we should “stop allowing [the Holocaust] to silence any discussion of the merits of eugenic thinking”.

Anomaly then proposes several potential eugenic interventions, one of which is a “parental licensing” scheme that prevents unfit parents from having children:

The typical response is for the state to step in and pay for all of these things, and in extreme cases to remove children from their parents and put them in foster care. But it would be more cost-effective to prevent unwanted pregnancies than treating their consequences, especially if we could achieve this goal by subsidizing the voluntary use of contraception. It may also be more desirable from the standpoint of future people.

The phrase “future people” figures repeatedly in Anomaly’s writing as a euphemism for the more conventional eugenic concept of genetic stock. This connection is made explicit when he explains the most compelling reason for supporting parental licensing:

The most compelling reason (though certainly not a decisive reason) for supporting parental licensing is that traits like impulse control, health, intelligence, and empathy have significant genetic components. What matters is not just that some parents are unwilling or unable to take care of their children; but that in many cases they are passing along an undesirable genetic endowment.

What are we really talking about here? Anomaly has proposed a technocratic rebranding of eugenic sterilization: instead of taking away your reproductive rights clinically, the state will take away your reproductive license and, if you still have children, impose “fines or other costs” (though Anomaly does not make the “other costs” explicit, eugenic sterilization is mentioned as an example in the very next sentence). How would the state decide who should lose their license? Anomaly explains:

For a parental licensing scheme to be fair, we would need to devise criteria that are effective at screening out only parents who impose significant risks of harm on their children or (through their children) on other people.

A fundamental normative principle of our society is that all members are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. What Anomaly envisions instead is a society where the state can seize one of the most intimate of human freedoms — the right to become a parent — based on innate factors. How does the state determine whether a future child imposes significant risk on future people? By inspecting the biological makeup of the parents and identifying “undesirable genetic endowments” that will harm others “through their children”. This is a policy built explicitly on genetic desirability and undesirability, where those deemed genetically unfit are stripped of their rights to have children and/or fined for doing so — aka bog-standard coercive eugenics.

Today, Anomaly is the spokesperson for a company that screens parents for “undesirable genetic endowments” and, for a price, promises to boost their genetic desirability and their value to future people. It is easy to see how Herasight fits directly into the eugenic parental licensing scheme Anomaly proposed. Having an open eugenicist as the spokesperson for an embryo selection company seems, to me, akin to hiring Hannibal Lecter to do PR for a hospital, but perhaps Anomaly has radically changed his views since billing himself as a eugenicist in 2023?

Herasight (with Anomaly as first author) recently published a perspective white-paper on the ethics polygenic selection, from which we can glean their corporate position. The perspective outlines the potential benefits and harms of embryo selection. The very first positive benefit listed? The “benefits to future people”. While this section starts with a focus the welfare of individual children, it ends with the same societal motivations as classical eugenics: the social costs of the unfit on communities and the benefits of the fit to scientific innovation and the public good: [...]

When eugenics goes mainstream

Let’s review: eugenics has as a goal of limiting the birthrate of the “unfit” or “undesirable” for the benefit of the group. Anomaly describes himself as a eugenicist and explicitly echoes this goal through, among other policies, a parental licensing proposal. Anomaly now runs a genetic screening company. The company recently published a perspective paper advocating for the stigmatization of “unfit” parents who do not screen. Anomaly, as spokesperson, reiterates that their goal is indeed eugenics — “Yes, and it’s great!”. With any other person one could argue that they were clueless or trolling; but if anyone knows what eugenics means, it is a person who has spent the past decade defending it.

I have to say I am floored by how strange this all is. My personal take on embryo selection has been decidedly neutral. I think the expected gains are limited by the genetic architecture of the traits being scored and the companies are mostly fudging the numbers to look good. As noted above, I also think a common use of this technology will be to calm the nerves of parents who otherwise would have gone childless. So I have no actual concerns about changes to the genetic make-up of the population or genetic inequality or any of the other utopian/dystopian predictions. But I am concerned that the marketing around the technology revives and normalizes classic eugenic arguments: that society is divided into the genetically fit and the genetically unfit, and the latter need to be stigmatized away from parenthood for the benefit of the former. I am particularly disturbed by the giddiness with which Anomaly and Herasight have repeatedly courted eugenics-related controversy as part of their launch campaign.

Even stranger has been the response, or rather non-response, from the genetics community. Social science geneticists and organizations spent the past decade writing FAQs warning against the use of their methods and data for individual prediction and against genetic essentialism. Many conference presentations and seminars start with a section on the sordid history of eugenics and the sterilization programs in the US and Nazi Germany, vowing not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Now, a company is openly advocating for eugenics (in fact, a company with direct connections to these social science organizations) and these organizations are silent. It is hard not to conclude that the FAQs and warnings were just lip service. And if the experts aren’t raising alarms, why would the public be alarmed?

by Sasha Gusev, The Infinitesimal |  Read more:

Image: Anselm Kiefer, Die Ungeborenen (The Unborn), 2002

[ed. With neophyte Nazis seemingly everywhere these days, CRISPR advances, and technocrats who want to live forever, it's perhaps not surprising that eugenics would be making a comeback. Update: Jonathan Anomaly, director of scientific research and communication for Herasight and whose articles I criticize here, responds in a detailed comment. I recommend reading his response together with this post. Anomaly’s role in the company has also been clarified. See also: Have we leapt into commercial genetic testing without understanding it? (Ars Technica).]