How the quest for the perfect baby is creating an ethical mess

In August, Siddiqui made a controversial suggestion that parents who choose not to use genetic testing could be considered irresponsible. “Just be honest: You’re okay with your child potentially suffering for life so you can feel morally superior…,” she wrote on X.

Americans have mixed opinions about emerging technology. In 2024, a group of bioethicists surveyed 1,627 American adults to determine attitudes toward a variety of criteria for polygenic testing. A large majority agreed to be tested for physical health conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Screening for mental health disorders, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD, has elicited more mixed, but still positive, responses. Appearance-related traits, such as skin colour, baldness and height, were less endorsed as something to test for.

Intelligence has been among the most controversial traits, which is unsurprising given the way it has been used as a weapon throughout history, and the lack of cultural consensus on how to define it. (In many countries, intelligence testing of embryos is strictly regulated; in the United Kingdom, the practice is banned entirely.) In a 2024 survey, 36.9% of respondents agreed to preimplantation genetic testing for intelligence, 40.5% declined, and 22.6% said they were unsure.

Despite the disagreement, intelligence was among the traits mentioned as targets for testing. Early on, Genomic Prediction says, it began receiving inquiries “from all over the world” about IQ tests, according to Diego Marin, the company’s head of global business development and scientific affairs.

At one point, the company offered a predictor of what it called “intellectual disability.” After some backlash that questioned the predictive power and ethics of these results, the company discontinued the feature. “Our mission and vision for this company is not to improve [a baby]“But to reduce the risk of disease,” Marin told me. “When it comes to intelligence or skin color or height or anything that is cosmetic and doesn’t really have a connotation of disease, we don’t invest in it.”

Orchids, on the other hand, test for genetic markers associated with intellectual disability and developmental delay. But this may not be all. According to one of the company’s employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the IQ test is also offered to “prestigious” clients. According to this employee, another source close to the company, reporting in washington post, Musk has used Orchid’s services to father at least one of his children, whom he shares with technology CEO Shevon Zellis. (Orchid, Musk, and Zelis did not respond to requests for comment.)

I meet Kian Sadeghi, the 25-year-old founder of New York-based Nucleus Genomics, on a sweltering July afternoon in his SoHo office. Sadiqi, with his agility and movement, spoke at the speed of a machine gun, pausing only from time to time to ask me if I was continuing the conversation.

Sadeghi modified his first organism—a sample of brewer’s yeast—when he was 16 years old. As a high school student in 2016, he was taking a CRISPR-Cas9 course at a lab in Brooklyn when he fell in love with the “beautiful depth” of genetics. After just a few years, he dropped out of college to build a better 23andMe.