[The Federalist] Most people are familiar with eugenics as a disturbing and morally repugnant artifact from the past, something we associate with Nazi experiments and racial pseudo-science. But it’s making a comeback in our time thanks to new branding and new technology. Call it neo-eugenics, coming soon to an IVF clinic near you.The old eugenics was of course the study and practice of shaping a population through selective breeding based on heritable traits deemed desirable, and the sterilization or prohibition on reproduction for those deemed undesirable. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenics produced a nasty set of policies, both in the United States and Europe. These policies were eventually discredited and discarded in part because Nazi Germany was big on eugenics. It was official Nazi policy, for example, to identify various groups of German citizens deemed "unfit" and then systematically kill them with poison gas — a practice that turned out to be a precursor to the Holocaust.
But now eugenics is making a comeback thanks to Peter Thiel-inspired libertarian tech-bros who have, no kidding, rebranded it "preventative medicine." This week, a company called Nucleus Genomics, a genetics testing startup founded by a 25-year-old named Kian Sadeghi, unveiled a new product called Nucleus Embryo that allows parents to screen embryos created through IVF by projected IQ, height, eye color, and hundreds of other traits before deciding which to implant and which to discard.
The company is marketing this new product, which costs $5,999, as "preventative medicine," a hi-tech health tool that delivers what the company calls "polygenic risk scores," meant to predict the likelihood of things like Alzheimer’s, heart disease and various cancers — among many other things, including IQ, height, and hundreds of other traits.
But calling it "preventative medicine" is just a bit of lazy legerdemain. It doesn’t change the fact that Nucleus Embryo is nothing more than a hi-tech form of eugenics — screening the unborn for "desirable" traits like IQ and snuffing out those deemed undesirable or unfit. Much like the Nazis would have done if they’d had such technology. As Michael Knowles noted on X, "To be clear, this technology does not help you extend your baby’s life; it provides information — and dubious information, at that — to help you kill your weakest children."
