Advances in reproductive genetics are rapidly reshaping how Americans think about family, health, and human potential. What began as a medical tool to identify rare chromosomal disorders has expanded into a commercial industry that promises parents control over the traits of their future children. Embryonic genetic screening (EGS)—which includes preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy, monogenic disorders, polygenic traits, and whole genome sequencing—now allows researchers to screen embryos for more than 1,200 single-gene conditions, multiple polygenic conditions, biological sex, and even probabilistic indicators of personality, intelligence, and physical appearance.REF These technologies, while marketed as tools for healthier families, have instead ushered in a form of consumer eugenics. These companies test and classify embryos as genetic winners and losers before a child has even taken its first breath, echoing the warning from the movie Gattaca that “we now have discrimination down to a science.”
The rise of EGS reflects broader cultural and technological movements that seek to optimize and extend human life. In Silicon Valley, investors who have already poured billions into longevity research and anti-aging biotechnology are now turning to reproductive genetics as the next frontier of control. For many, the goal is not only to overcome infertility or prevent disease but to select what kinds of children are allowed to be born in the first place. Within this logic, reproduction becomes another domain for enhancement and selection, driven by the belief that technology can and should perfect human life.
What Is Embryonic Genetic Screening, and How Does It Work?
EGS refers to laboratory procedures that analyze the DNA of embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) before implantation. The most common form, preimplantation genetic testing (PGT), occurs about five to seven days after fertilization, when the human embryo has reached the blastocyst stage. At this point, technicians take a small biopsy of five to 10 cells from the trophectoderm, the layer that later forms the placenta. These cells are amplified in the laboratory to create enough DNA for analysis. From this small sample, laboratories attempt to identify genetic markers associated with health, biological sex, and an increasing number of complex traits such as personality, intelligence, and physical appearance.
There are three main types of preimplantation genetic testing:
- PGT-A, or testing for aneuploidy, examines whether the embryo has the correct number of chromosomes. Technicians often use this test to identify embryos with missing or extra chromosomes, conditions that can result in miscarriage or disorders such as Down syndrome.
- PGT-M, or testing for monogenic disorders, focuses on single-gene mutations that cause specific inherited diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia.
- PGT-P, or testing polygenic risk, estimates the likelihood that an embryo will develop complex conditions later in life—such as diabetes, heart disease, or certain cancers—by combining the effects of many genes across the genome.
As Nucleus Genomics explains, “The main difference between PGT-P and the other tests is that PGT-A, PGT-M, and [other tests] screen for existing abnormalities in the embryo, while PGT-P predicts the likelihood of developing complex conditions later in life.”REF The result is a numerical “risk score” that ranks embryos from lowest to highest estimated genetic risk.
Recent advances have further expanded this process. Companies such as Orchid now combine PGT with whole genome sequencing (WGS), a technology made possible by the Human Genome Project. In practice, WGS does not directly read every piece of DNA from the embryo. Because technicians sample only a few cells, the DNA is first amplified using whole-genome amplification, which increases the available material. The resulting data are then compared against large genetic databases to infer or approximate the embryo’s full genetic sequence. Using this approach, companies claim to screen for more than a thousand single-gene disorders, a dozen or more polygenic conditions, and a growing list of traits related to personality, cognition, and physical appearance.
The growing market for EGS extends well beyond any single company. Orchid is the most visible player in this field, but other companies such as Hera, Heliospect, MyOme, and Nucleus Genomics offer similar screening tools. Each promises parents greater control over the health and traits of their future children through increasingly comprehensive genetic analyses. This expanding industry rests on a powerful cultural assumption: that biology is destiny. Modern science often treats DNA as the blueprint for human potential, and embryo screening builds on that premise. Yet this view is deeply contested. A recent study from the University of Alberta found that many common diseases—including certain cancers, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes—may have a genetic contribution of only 5 percent to 10 percent.REF
Despite these limits, companies continue to market testing as a form of proactive care, offering parents detailed reports that classify embryos across hundreds of conditions, traits, and risk factors. In practice, these tests do not heal or cure; they sort. As New Atlantis editor Ari Schulman observed, “Cancer screening prevents disease by helping the patient live. Embryo screening prevents disease by killing the patient.”REF EGS remains largely unregulated in the United States, with few laws limiting its scope or claims. As this marketplace expands, the scientific foundations on which it rests—and the reliability of the data it promotes—are among the most contested questions in modern biotechnology.
PGT and WGS: The Many Problems and the Science Behind It
PGT has become a standard part of many IVF cycles in the United States. Couples often believe that testing embryos before implantation will improve their chances of having a healthy child. However, large studies and medical societies have raised major concerns about the accuracy and benefits of these tests. PGT is now used in about 40 percent of U.S. IVF cycles, even though many studies show that it does not improve live birth rates compared to standard IVF.REF In some cases, it may even lower them, especially for older women. A 2011 randomized study found no improvement in live births among women who used PGT, and a follow-up review concluded that “for women of advanced maternal age, [PGT] significantly lowers the live birth rate.”REF Researchers and fertility experts have also criticized the introduction of these technologies into clinics without proper scientific evidence. One leading specialist said he was “appalled at the implementation into clinical practice of novel technology without the appropriate underpinning science.”REF
PGT-A. PGT-A aims to detect embryos with the wrong number of chromosomes. These abnormalities can cause miscarriage or genetic conditions such as Down syndrome. However, multiple studies show that PGT-A often produces false positives. In one analysis, about one-third of embryos labeled “abnormal” were retested and found normal.REF Another study reported that results from repeat testing matched the original diagnosis in only two of 11 embryos, suggesting a false positive rate of more than 50 percent.REF Researchers believe that mosaicism—the presence of both normal and abnormal cells within the same embryo—is a major reason for these errors. Because a biopsy takes cells from the outer layer of the embryo, it may not represent the inner cells that become the baby.REF Some animal studies show that embryos with mosaic cells can even self-correct during development.REF Medical societies have taken note. The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology does not recommend routine use of PGT-A because of inconsistent evidence and risk of embryo loss.REF
PGT-M. PGT-M is used to detect known single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. While this testing can be useful for families with specific hereditary conditions, it still faces scientific challenges. Because testing requires a biopsy of five to 10 cells from the embryo’s outer layer, researchers have questioned whether that small sample can accurately represent the embryo as a whole. A 2017 modeling study found that this type of biopsy is “mathematically incapable” of reliably determining the number of chromosomes for clinical decisions.REF Animal studies from 2024 also found signs of stress and epigenetic changes in embryos that underwent biopsy and freezing.REF Although short-term studies show that most biopsied embryos appear healthy at birth, there is little research tracking long-term outcomes. These unanswered questions highlight the limits of what even single-gene testing can safely predict.
PGT-P. PGT-P is the newest and most controversial form of embryo screening. Instead of identifying single-gene disorders, it tries to predict the likelihood that an embryo will develop complex diseases—such as diabetes, heart disease, or schizophrenia—by combining the effects of many genes. The problem is that these predictions are based on computer models, not real-world data. A 2024 review found that even under ideal conditions, the benefit of PGT-P was minimal. The study estimated that absolute risk reductions for disease ranged from 0.02 percent to 10.1 percent, meaning technicians would need to test between 10 and 5,000 IVF patients to prevent one case of disease.REF The authors concluded that PGT-P “should be strictly limited to research settings” until further evidence is available. The American College of Medical Genetics and the European Society of Human Genetics have issued similar warnings, saying the technology is too premature for clinical use.REF Other studies confirm that these risk models were built from mostly European genetic data, which means they may not apply to black, Hispanic, or Asian populations.REF Using these scores in a diverse country such as the United States could therefore produce misleading or inequitable results.
WGS: The New Frontier. Companies such as Orchid have introduced WGS to embryonic screening scores to produce a more advanced form of embryo testing. WGS does not directly read every piece of DNA in an embryo. Because so few cells are available, the DNA must be copied many times through a process called whole-genome amplification, and the missing parts are filled in using computer-based comparisons with genetic databases. The resulting “complete” genome is therefore an estimate, not a full sequence. Orchid claims that this method can detect thousands of single-gene and polygenic conditions, but there are no independent, peer-reviewed studies verifying these claims.REF Even Noor Siddiqui, Orchid’s founder, acknowledges that “any embryo testing is still a screening test” and “until that baby is born, you can’t give a definitive diagnosis.”REF This distinction is critical: Screening is not the same as diagnosis, and the predictive value of these methods has not been proved. A 2019 study estimated that screening embryos for complex traits such as height or intelligence would yield an average gain of only about 2.5 IQ points or 2.5 centimeters in height.REF
Taken together, the evidence from medical societies and scientific studies paints a consistent picture: Companies may market PGT-A, PGT-P, and WGS as cutting-edge tools for creating “healthier” children, yet their scientific foundation is weak, and their data often rely on limited or non-representative populations. The tests are prone to sampling bias, uncertain accuracy, and overpromised benefits. These scientific flaws do more than undermine the credibility of genetic testing—they open the door to a new form of consumer eugenics that treats human embryos as products to be ranked, selected, or discarded.
Consumer Eugenics
Even if every estimate and readout were perfect, EGS would not justify destroying or indefinitely freezing human embryos. These tools do not heal or cure. They test and score embryos across hundreds of conditions and traits, encouraging parents to choose the “best” child based on their own preferences. The appeal is easy to understand: Why wait for complex cures when you can select a so-called healthy embryo today? But selection is not medicine; it is a market practice that reduces human lives to comparative risk profiles. These technologies also create a powerful incentive to manufacture large numbers of embryos in order to increase the odds of finding the “right” one or to engineer a so-called savior sibling. In practice, this means intentionally creating embryos that will be discarded, destroyed, or left frozen indefinitely. This industrial-scale creation and elimination of human embryos is not a side effect of the system but one of its core features.
Silicon Valley’s Misguided Compassion. Company founders often lead with moving personal stories. Siddiqui and Nucleus Genomics’s Kian Sadeghi have described relatives who faced blindness or sudden death due to genetic conditions. These accounts resonate with parents who fear passing on serious diseases. They also set a frame in which rejecting higher-risk human embryos seems like responsible love. In a recent podcast with Ross Douthat, Siddiqui recounts: “Growing up, my mom got a pretty devastating diagnosis … retinitis pigmentosa … you progressively go blind.… What sat with me and what I felt through that experience was just this profound unfairness, this idea that there’s this genetic lottery that’s unfolding, and some people win and some people lose.”REF That feeling is real, but the ethical reality is also clear: Testing does not make a sick human embryo well. It sorts embryos so that higher risk lives are not given a chance to develop. A technology aimed at preventing suffering can erase entire lines of relationships, including lives that carry hardship, dignity, and joy.
Silicon Valley’s version of pronatalism elevates control over acceptance. Parents are encouraged to manage reproduction like a project, relocating conception to a lab, measuring risk at each step, and treating uncertainty as a failure of planning. The promise is safety, but the effect can be the opposite. As Emma Waters explained in an essay for Public Discourse:
Such a worldview encourages these elite leaders in their use of technology to insulate themselves—in the name of their future children—from the risk, uncertainty, and vulnerability inherent in childbearing. By removing childbearing from its natural context and placing it in a tightly monitored environment, such parents receive a misleading, false promise of safety. In their effort to overcome the unpredictability of childbearing, many may increase suffering.REF
The same mindset prizes genetic inputs and discounts nurture, training parents to see a child as parts to be optimized rather than a person to be received, guided, and formed. Equating embryo selection with consumer planning also distorts parental love. As Siddiqui argued in the same podcast, parents may see embryo selection as “taking the maximum amount of care, the maximum amount of love, in the same way that they plan nursery, plan their home, plan their preschool.” Similarly, as the Washington Post reported on July 16, 2025, “Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund who has invested in Nucleus, made a similar argument. ‘When you choose your married partner, you’re using a form of eugenics,’ he said.”REF Treating a unique human embryo like a household purchase or educational decision confuses proper parental decision-making to nurture a child’s development with a substitute for the far graver power to decide whether that child will live, be frozen, or be destroyed. Moreover, choosing an adult partner is a mutual, relational decision. It is a proper use of agency over one’s own life, not an imposition of one’s preferences over which human embryos are chosen.
Impact on Children Selected with This Technology. Even as this technology promises parents unprecedented choice and opportunity to select the healthiest, smartest, or best children, parents leave their children with the weight of parental preferences imposed on them before birth. As Wired reported, the first “designer babies” are now teenagers and adults, and “some families are discovering that, as hard as you try, things don’t always work out as planned.”REF The magazine described parents who chose specific egg and sperm donors or screened embryos for desired traits only to find that “the kids feel like walking science experiments” and that “parents are disappointed in how their progeny turned out.” One West Coast psychologist told Wired that many of these young people “grow up knowing they were engineered to fulfill a plan,” which can leave them feeling “like projects, not persons.”
The article recounts how parents, especially in achievement-driven environments, sometimes view their children through the lens of design and performance. Some fathers, the psychologist noted, “hardly know their children,” while mothers “try to hold it all together” in families that treat genetic optimization as another form of success. When those children struggle or fall short of expectations, “it’s especially devastating.” As the psychologist warned, “Trying to control your child is a recipe for disaster. The kid is going to rebel. If you have a preconceived notion of how they’re going to be, either you’re going to be severely disappointed or you’re going to shove them into a mold, and it’s not going to work.”
Even the most visible champions of technological reproduction are now confronting its human cost. In 2022, Elon Musk’s oldest living child, conceived through IVF, changed his name to Vivian and publicly criticized the very technologies that shaped his conception, posting about how wrong it felt that even his sex was chosen for him before birth. “My assigned sex at birth was a commodity that was bought and paid for,” Vivian said in a Threads post. “So when I was feminine as a child and then turned out to be transgender, I was going against the product that was sold. That expectation of masculinity that I had to rebel against all my life was a monetary transaction. A monetary transaction. A MONETARY TRANSACTION.” In a second post, Vivian added, “How the f*** is this legal.”REF Vivian represents a growing chorus of young adults conceived through reproductive technologies who have begun to speak out against what they see as the commodification and control of human life, including their own.
If the first generation of assisted reproduction was about overcoming infertility, the next is about curating the child. That shift has moral consequences far beyond the laboratory. The more parents believe they can design perfection, the less room remains for unconditional love and acceptance—and the reality that, try as we might, we cannot overcome the natural vulnerability and unpredictability of childbearing through technological interventions. The technologies that promise to free parents from anxiety may instead bind their children to expectations they never chose. Like the offspring of champion racehorses, the expectations are set extremely high and rarely met. And as the next generation—Vivian’s generation—begins to speak, society will have to decide whether it still believes that all children, no matter how conceived, are more than the sum of their genes.
Trends in Childbearing. The ethical implications of embryo selection stretch beyond individual families. They shape the genetic and cultural makeup of future generations, often in ways no one intends. As the same Washington Post article reported, Caltech geneticist Lior Pachter warned that screening against conditions such as schizophrenia might also remove genes tied to creativity: “Maybe we don’t want to screen those people out of our society.” The same genetic logic that promises healthier children could quietly eliminate the very traits that make society resilient and humane. When selection becomes routine, it erodes the idea that every life has equal value and replaces it with a hierarchy of preferred traits.
Even if embryo screening were flawless, it would still be wrong. Reducing human life to a list of desirable features—health, sex, IQ, personality, or physical appearance—turns the creation of children into a consumer transaction. This is consumer eugenics: the belief that we can design better people by rejecting those who do not measure up. In such a system, the human life becomes a product ranked by genetic desirability. It is not hard to imagine what might have been lost if earlier generations had access to the same technology. What if Albert Einstein’s predisposition to neurodivergence or Taylor Swift’s creative temperament had been screened out by parents who wanted children with fewer risks or calmer personalities? Or, even more arbitrarily, because their parents wanted to select children with green eyes or a certain sex?
Indeed, what if baby boomers had access to this technology in the 1950s and 1960s? What kind of traits would that generation have chosen, and thereby imposed, on future generations? Their priorities might have been height, conformity, or avoiding mental variance; parents of the 1980s might have favored athleticism or extroversion; today’s parents might prioritize emotional stability, thinness, or a predicted aptitude for science. As trends shift, so could the biological traits of future populations. Some advocates emphasize that sexual orientation and gender identity have biological components. But if genetic or epigenetic markers for these traits were ever identified, would prospective parents use embryo screening to select for or against them? As these technologies expand, so will the temptation to choose embryos not just for health but for the traits that happen to be in vogue.
What began as a medical tool to prevent disease could end as a marketplace for fashioning people. Consumer eugenics does not liberate parents from fear—it mirrors it. In trying to control life, we risk producing children less reflective of human possibility and more reflective of our own cultural insecurities.
Making Sense of the Human Embryo in Biotechnology. At the heart of embryo screening lies a fundamental moral question: What is the human embryo, and how should it be treated? Bioethicists continue to debate whether a human embryo possesses personhood or some other moral standing that commands respect. The spectrum of opinion is wide because the embryo “does not act as a mature person does”—it cannot reason, communicate, or choose. Yet its developmental continuity is clear: Every human adult was once an embryo. The question is not only when life begins but whether that life deserves protection from the start.
Developmental systems theory, one of the most widely accepted models in biology and philosophy, describes the embryo as a self-organizing human organism—a coordinated network of molecular and cellular activity that directs its own growth from conception onward.REF Philosopher-biologist Nicanor Austriaco defines this as a “dynamic, complex, and seamlessly integrated network…connected by reaction pathways which generate shape, mass, energy, and information transfer over the course of a lifetime.”REF In this view, an adult is ontologically continuous with the embryo and zygote that came before. As biologists Samuel and Maureen Condic write, the embryo is not a potential person but a person with potential.REF
This distinction matters, because modern reproductive genetics treats embryos as if they were pre-human materials to be optimized, ranked, or discarded. In consumer eugenics, the embryo becomes a dataset, not a developing human being. The question becomes not how to care for a new life but which version of life is worth allowing to exist. The commercial logic of human embryo testing assumes that the value of one’s life can be derived from risk scores or predicted traits—a profound departure from both scientific and moral realism.
Legal systems have struggled to keep pace. Some scholars, such as Jessica Berg, argue that human embryos could be granted a form of “legal personality” similar to that once extended to corporations. This persona ficta protects certain interests without resolving deeper metaphysical questions.REF Others contend that recognizing even limited personhood for embryos would clarify their moral standing and constrain destructive practices in fertility clinics. Yet in the United States, policy remains largely silent. The human embryo occupies a gray zone between property and person, where it can be owned, stored, or destroyed with minimal oversight.
That ambiguity is precisely what allows consumer eugenics to flourish. When the law defines human embryos as pre-personal entities—valuable only insofar as they meet certain genetic criteria—they become subject to the same market forces as any other product. The logic of enhancement transforms the laboratory into a showroom such that parents are encouraged—directly or indirectly—to freeze or destroy living embryos that fail to meet expectations. This approach does not expand human freedom; it reduces the beginning of life to a series of consumer choices.
A humane biotechnology policy should recover what both philosophy and developmental biology affirm: that each embryo is a distinct and living member of the human species deserving of respect regardless of perceived genetic “fitness.” Recognizing that fact does not end scientific inquiry, but it should restrain the market’s impulse to perfect the human future not by preventing but by eliminating imperfect beginnings.
The Increasing Role of Artificial Intelligence in Selecting Human Embryos
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming central to how human embryos are evaluated, ranked, and selected for implantation. Machine-learning programs can now scan embryo images, compare genetic data, and calculate the likelihood of successful pregnancy, disease, or long-term health outcomes. Companies such as Alife Health, Orchid, and Conceivable Life Sciences are integrating predictive algorithms that claim to identify the “healthiest” embryos with greater accuracy than human embryologists. These systems weigh dozens of variables, from cell division patterns to polygenic scores, based on data from thousands of IVF cycles. The outcome is no longer a human judgment but an automated decision about which human embryos will be chosen, frozen, or destroyed.
Proponents say that AI-assisted screening can improve outcomes and reduce costs, but it also deepens the moral concerns already present in embryo selection. Algorithms trained on incomplete or biased data can reproduce those same biases in their recommendations. A 2024 American Medical Association study found that 54 percent of respondents were “very or extremely concerned” about the potential for eugenic outcomes in AI-driven embryo selection, even as 40 percent said they would likely use such tools to select for traits such as intelligence.REF When technology begins to quantify the worth of future children, society moves from medicine to design. The quiet promise of “healthier families” becomes a sorting mechanism for who is worthy of being welcomed into a family at all.
The next stage of reproductive AI is moving even further. Research presented at the 2025 Centennial Conference on Genomic Computing described large language models capable of assisting in genome interpretation and synthesis, enabling AI to propose edits or fill in missing genetic sequences.REF In this context, AI ceases to be a diagnostic tool and becomes an author of life itself. As these systems gain influence over which embryos are implanted or discarded, human reproduction risks are being governed by algorithms.
Disability Rights
The disability rights community has a complex history when it comes to genetic testing. As a report from the Hastings Center warned decades ago, once prenatal genetic testing became ubiquitous, families would naturally begin to include genetic testing as a part of routine, best-practice prenatal care. That future is here. Using prenatal genetic testing to prevent the birth of children with disabilities now easily falls under the moral guise of making healthier babies. The disability rights community raised concerns that these tests reinforced the medical model of disability, cementing the belief that difference in ability and characteristics represent a diminished personhood. Results of prenatal genetic testing substitute one characteristic for the whole.
Today, parents use information from prenatal genetic tests to decide whether to continue with a specific embryonic human or growing child. This is a direct threat to people with disabilities without curing a single disease. For example, in Iceland, nearly all women who receive prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies, thus prompting a 2017 CBS News report to describe the country as “eradicating Down syndrome births,” when, in fact, Iceland is eliminating the children who may have it.REF These choices act as moral teachers, forming prospective parents to desire children that fulfill only their sentimental—and, at base, utilitarian—desires when forming families. While there is certainly a place to explore potential therapies for children diagnosed even in utero with genetic conditions, the medical community should take issue with information presented as a decision point for whether to carry a child to term rather than as a foundation for ongoing medical support for that child. Ultimately, “prenatal testing threatens our attitudes toward children, parenthood, and ultimately ourselves.”REF
Sadly, some social narratives now intertwine disability rights with abortion support in ways that are difficult to untangle. One telling paper argues, “If selective abortion has such negative consequences for disabled people, though, why don’t [disabled people] seek to ban the practice?”REF But those prevented from being born cannot seek their own legal justice.
Stifling Innovation
Routine screening of human embryos will inevitably change the relationship of parent to child. Families will increasingly be built to meet exacting specifications rather than to accept children as diverse gifts regardless of what accidents of fate or genetics bring their way. Embryonic screening allows would-be parents to pursue the highest-quality embryo possible along whichever dimension they so desire rather than welcoming the child they conceive with whatever talents or burdens they may bring into the world. And that shift will have broader cultural ramifications as well.REF
In a world with widespread and normalized genetic testing of human embryos, parents who choose to “take the risk” of conceiving children the “old-fashioned” way will face the social stigma of having not given their future children the best possible start in life. Giving birth to a child with Down’s syndrome, Trisomy 18, or other inherited disorders will be seen as having made an expensive and irresponsible choice that could have been avoided by preimplantation testing.
This means that a child with a genetic disorder will run the risk of being seen as, at best, a lost opportunity or, at worst, as an unjustified burden of individual parents to bear rather than as worthy of social investment, care, and support. Parents who could have taken the “responsible” step of selecting to implant an embryo without genetic diseases will be treated with skepticism, if not contempt. With less social support for rare genetic diseases—and fewer infants born with such conditions—research dollars will dry up, leading to fewer possibilities for breakthrough treatments or new approaches that could give at-risk children the chance of a healthier lives.REF Eugenic screening will not improve health outcomes for sick children; it will prevent those children from ever being born.
Similarly, a societal expectation that embryonic screening and IVF should be normal parts of reproduction will reduce medical research into infertility.REF If couples are encouraged to postpone childbearing until they can afford embryo screening to ensure their children are free of genetic “imperfections,” many may delay pregnancy until it is too late. In this way, permitting or subsidizing embryonic screening will reduce support for parents who have children in an “irresponsible” way and incentivize delayed childbearing, likely leading to lower birth rates overall.
Lack of Federal Accountability
Despite the rapid commercialization of preimplantation genetic testing, federal data sources remain limited. Policymakers already face, and will continue to face, pressure to invest public funds into further research or to require insurance coverage for these tests. They will also hear arguments that refusing to participate in a “genetic testing arms race” will leave the United States behind other nations that fully embrace these technologies.
Having policy discussions without addressing the uneven quality and availability of federal data on emerging reproductive technologies would be a serious mistake. Ignoring these gaps risks decisions based on incomplete or flawed assumptions. Policymakers should strengthen federal data collection so that future choices are grounded in accurate, timely information—and, most importantly, sound ethics.
Agencies such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Research Service occasionally release reports on assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Still, these efforts are issue-specific and sporadic rather than part of a sustained monitoring program.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ART report is currently the only continuous federal monitoring program for ART in the United States. Unlike other public health summaries in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the ART report exists because federal law mandated it. Data are collected through a specific reporting structure designed for regulatory monitoring, not for broader public health analysis.
While the ART report provides valuable insight, it does not capture the full scope of rapidly expanding ART. As these innovations multiply, the absence of comprehensive federal data makes it increasingly difficult for lawmakers to draw informed conclusions or anticipate emerging ethical and policy challenges.
Rather than relying on ad hoc publications, Congress should request recurring GAO reports that monitor federal involvement in ART such as preimplantation genetic testing. A consistent reporting schedule would help build a reliable and long-term body of federal research on these technologies.
However, congressional reports alone are not enough. A single lapse in oversight caused by Member or staff turnover can interrupt years of data collection. Weakly drafted requests may also produce reports that fail to address key policy questions. Members of Congress and their staff may not always know where the data gaps are or what technical challenges exist behind the scenes. Ongoing technical assistance from professional societies and bioethics experts would strengthen congressional inquiries and improve the quality of oversight.
Congress should also codify and expand the Dickey-Wicker and Aderholt amendments. These annual appropriations riders prohibit the use of federal funds for embryo-destructive research and for research involving three-parent embryos. Congress should build on these protections to ensure that federal funds do not support emerging reproductive technologies that raise significant ethical concerns.
In addition, Congress should request that federal agencies conduct family policymaking assessments when developing regulations related to ART. Originally established by executive order under President Reagan and later codified in 1998, these assessments require agencies to consider how federal actions may affect family well-being, including marital commitment, parental rights, and financial stability. Regular application of this process would help ensure that emerging technologies are evaluated not only for their scientific merit but also for their social and ethical impact.
It is time to equip Congress with an understanding of the evolution of EGS, the shifting costs and usage rates, the implications for disability rights, the influence of AI, and the long-term health outcomes for children conceived through ART as well as their parents.
Comprehensive, congressionally mandated monitoring of emerging reproductive technologies is essential. Only a sustained, methodologically consistent federal program can guide responsible policy. Operating in a data vacuum—or relying solely on reports by commercial biotechnology firms—does not just risk poor policymaking; it risks eroding public trust and, ultimately, has profound implications for humanity itself.
Policy Recommendations
EGS has advanced far beyond its scientific and ethical foundations. Marketed as tools for healthier families, these tests remain unreliable, largely unregulated, and raise serious concerns about informed consent and the misuse of genetic data. Therefore, Congress should:
- Strengthen and amend the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 to provide comprehensive national protection against the misuse of genetic data in both reproductive and insurance contexts. The revised law should prohibit the use of genetic information in underwriting or setting premiums for life, long-term care, and disability insurance; expand privacy and informed consent provisions to cover data generated through PGT and WGS; and require clinics and laboratories to disclose how embryonic genetic data are collected, stored, shared, and used so that parents understand the limits of predictive accuracy and retain control over their embryo-related genetic information. The law should also establish a federal privacy standard, modeled on strong state laws such as Florida’s, to prevent the sale, transfer, or secondary use of genomic data without explicit consent.
- Establish genetic profiles as a full protected class under civil rights laws including Title II, Title VI, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Fair Housing Act; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; and the Education Opportunities Act.
- Amend the Fertility Success Rate and Certification Act to prohibit embryo destruction for certain cosmetic and eugenic preferences including eye color, height, intelligence, and personality traits.
- Prohibit marketing of polygenic trait or enhancement testing to consumers by amending the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to ban the commercial advertising or sale of embryo tests that rank or score embryos by non-medical traits such as intelligence, race, appearance, or personality. Authorize the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to classify such tests as “deceptive health products” until peer-reviewed evidence supports clinical benefit and requires pre-market review for any new AI-assisted embryo-ranking software.
- Mandate algorithmic transparency for AI-assisted embryo selection by directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology and FDA to develop algorithmic audit and transparency standards for AI tools used in assisted reproductive technology. Require disclosure of training-data composition, bias-testing results, and human oversight mechanisms before any clinical deployment.
- Restrict federal funding and tax incentives for eugenic applications by prohibiting federal funds, grants, or tax credits for any research or clinical program that promotes human embryo selection for non-medical traits in assisted reproductive technology or scientific research and experimentation. Condition grants on excluding trait-ranking or destruction of embryos for non-therapeutic reasons.
- Establish clear federal informed consent requirements for all clinical and commercial uses of PGT and WGS, mandating that laboratories and fertility clinics disclose the accuracy limits, predictive uncertainty, and potential uses of genetic data before testing.
- Require the FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to strengthen oversight under existing laboratory regulations, including standardized consent forms, data privacy protections, and postnatal follow-up where claims of accuracy are made.
- Expand ongoing federal monitoring through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect data on ART. Reporting should include the total number of embryos created, the proportion subjected to PGT or WGS, and annual figures on embryos that remain frozen or are discarded.
Conclusion
EGS has moved far beyond its medical origins. What began as a tool to detect rare disorders now functions as a commercial system that classifies, ranks, and eliminates human embryos. Polygenic risk scores, whole genome sequencing, and AI-assisted selection promise precision and control but instead create a false sense of mastery over life. These technologies cannot heal; they only decide which lives are allowed to continue. In doing so, they risk transforming the creation of human life into a marketplace of options and outcomes.
The science itself remains deeply contested. This Backgrounder examined the leading forms of preimplantation genetic testing—PGT-A, PGT-M, PGT-P, and whole genome sequencing—and found that each rests on uncertain or incomplete evidence. Studies reveal inconsistent accuracy, false positives, limited predictive value, and major gaps in data across populations. Yet these same tests are marketed as tools of certainty and safety to anxious parents. Policymakers should recognize that what these companies sell as progress often rests on fragile scientific grounds and carries profound moral costs.
Human embryo screening undermines parental trust, stigmatizes disability, narrows genetic diversity, and erodes the foundation of unconditional love. AI compounds these dangers by introducing opaque, data-driven systems that make judgments once reserved for human conscience. At the same time, federal oversight remains fragmented and inadequate. Congress should not allow efforts to test and select human embryos to proceed as an unregulated experiment. Strong, transparent, and principled oversight is essential to ensure that technological power serves human dignity rather than replacing it. The measure of progress in reproductive science is not how much control we gain over life but how faithfully we safeguard its worth.
Emma Waters is Policy Analyst in the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation. Liana Graham is Research Assistant in Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Noah Torres is a Policy Analyst for the Center for Health and Families at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Patrick Brown is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Rachel Roth Aldhizer is a Visiting Fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Melanie Israel is a Visiting Fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. Wesley Hodges is Acting Director in the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation.
