Advances in the world of embryonic screening: The company Nucleus Genomics announced the launch of Nucleus Embryo yesterday, which they bill as "the first genetic optimization software that lets parents pursuing IVF [in vitro fertilization] see and understand the complete genetic profile of each of their embryos." It's a dashboard, essentially, that lets parents see the full analysis of their frozen embryos—each embryo's probability of having some 900 diseases, as well as information about their appearance (male pattern baldness, eye color, hair color), IQ, and more. You can now compare each embryo to the others, and rank order your preferences for which ones you implant, if you so choose. You can know which embryos are more likely to have seasonal allergies, asthma, restless leg syndrome, schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis, alcoholism, celiac disease, and more.
"Some people don't think you should have access to the choice Nucleus Embryo empowers you to make," writes Nucleus CEO Kian Sadeghi. "Here's the thing. It's not their choice to make. It's yours." (For the price of $6,000, of course.)
Competitors like Orchid offer essentially the same thing. What's discussed a bit less in all the marketing copy is that you're not genetically tweaking the embryos, you're just discarding the ones that don't meet your specifications. And, look, I don't mean to let my Catholic show too much, but I have a hard time getting excited about a Gattaca future—as do many others who've been following the developments in the world of embryonic screening:
