The U.S. biotech company Nucleus Genomics has announced new in vitro fertilization (IVF) software that allows couples to choose which of up to 20 embryos to implant into the woman’s uterus by looking at embryos’ complete genetic profiles.
The product, called Nucleus Embryo, advertises itself as “the first genetic optimization software” that provides clients a “complete genetic profile of each of their embryos.” According to the press release, the product is “built for longevity at every stage of life.” The tool “enables parents undergoing IVF to analyze and compare up to 20 embryos across over 900 hereditary conditions and 40 additional analyses beyond basic viability — spanning cancers, chronic conditions, appearance, cognitive ability, mental health, and more.” The product joins a U.S. fertility industry estimated to be worth $5.7 billion in 2024.
The technology encourages Nucleus Genomics’ clients to view IVF embryos as a eugenics project (if they didn’t already think that way, that is). An overview of the company’s software reads, “Choose thoughtfully”; “Sort, compare, and choose your embryos based on what matters most to you.” The tab shows a chart titled “Compare your embryos” that displays rows describing how the babies’ genes will affect their susceptibility to diseases like type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s as well as height, eye color, hair color, and IQ.
For now, Nucleus Embryo does not allow for gene editing, but it still advertises itself as “genetic optimization software.” The obvious implication: You optimize your babies’ genetics by trashing unwanted embryos that are not optimized. Embryos that are not selected are thrown in a medical waste bin or frozen indefinitely.
While one could point to a number of ethical and political problems with IVF more generally, Nucleus Embryo spotlights the industry’s strikingly eugenic aspects. The maturation of Nucleus Embryo and similar technologies vindicates criticisms made by C. S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man, which comments on modern society’s naive understanding of technological advancement.
Abolition of Man is uncannily salient to the current moment, despite the fact that the book never mentions the technology of IVF. In fact, the book was written 35 years before the first IVF baby was born in 1978. Instead, Lewis discusses contraception and recognizes both its ability to deny existence to future generations and its possibility to facilitate selective breeding. About this technology, Lewis writes that there is “a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive.” At the same time, Lewis reminds us of a counterintuitive point: Those who undergo IVF treatments, in addition to the embryos, are themselves the patients or the subjects of others who use technologies.
When people typically think about technological developments, those who use technologies believe that they are becoming more powerful — that they are able to do things they couldn’t do before. The people at Nucleus Genomics certainly think this way. And so do those who use the technology of IVF; couples who undergo IVF treatments act as if the woman is automatically able to get pregnant.
However, Lewis points out that in reality the practice of technology is ultimately the power of some men exercised over other men. “What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.” Those who undergo IVF treatments have not become more capable of procreation themselves. Instead, these women are the subjects of practitioners who operate on them and take charge of their reproductive systems.
Numerous IVF horror stories illustrate Lewis’ poignancy. Among other examples, one Utah family who had used IVF realized that their 12-year-old son was only biologically related to his mother. They discovered that the sperm to create his embryo came from another couple who had also used IVF. In another story, one Indiana fertility doctor used artificial insemination, which shares many important similarities with IVF, to impregnate at least 94 patients with his own sperm, without their knowledge or consent.
An NBC analysis of federal and state legal databases discovered over 300 lawsuits filed from 2019 to 2024 alleging that embryos, eggs, or sperm had been lost, destroyed, or swapped. One storage tank failure at a fertility clinic led to the destruction of roughly 2,500 eggs and 1,500 embryos.
That same article recounts the story of one woman who underwent in vitro fertilization and discovered that the baby she had given birth to was not her own. The baby, unlike the mother, had dark skin, and a DNA test revealed the child was an embryo mix-up with another couple. After raising the baby for five months, a court decided to grant custody to the biological parents. “I walked in a mom with a child and a baby who loved me and was mine and was attached to me, and I walked out of the building with an empty stroller, and they left with my son,” she said.
With technologies like IVF, Lewis shows us that what we call “Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” Those who pay to use IVF haven’t really gained control; they’ve allowed others to have control over them and unprecedented power over the reproduction of future generations of children.
Criticizing the problems with the IVF industry does not denigrate the humanity of those born through IVF, just as those conceived through other immoral means are still as inherently valuable as any other person. However, the IVF industry attempts to treat embryos as property rather than persons. A recent piece in the Guardian criticizes the position of “treating embryos like people, not property” as the reason why IVF, including embryo adoption, is “costly and time-consuming.” In other words, treating embryos as humans is at odds with efforts to expand access to IVF and lower its cost. This includes the Trump administration’s recent executive order.
As a further example, the defendants in the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C. pointed out that the plaintiffs signed contracts in which “their embryonic children were, in many respects, treated as nonhuman property: the Fondes elected in their contract to automatically ‘destroy’ any embryos that had remained frozen longer than five years; the LePages chose to donate similar embryos to medical researchers whose projects would ‘result in the destruction of the embryos’; and the Aysennes agreed to allow any ‘abnormal embryos’ created through IVF to be experimented on for ‘research’ purposes and then ‘discarded.’” The court case highlighted the fact that the IVF industry treats embryos simultaneously as both humans and property.
But the problems with IVF eugenics technology go further. Those developing these technologies have not thought through the fact that the applications of their technologies take on lives of their own, even to the surprise of their creators. For example, Hanna Rosin’s article “The End of Men” recounts how biologist Ronald Ericsson developed the first “scientifically proven method” for choosing the sex of children in the late 1970s.
At the time, people were worried that the technology would be used to create a universal preference for boys over girls. “Feminists of the era did not take kindly to Ericsson and his Marlboro Man veneer,” Rosin writes. To them, this technology “portended a dystopia of mass-produced boys.”
The reality was precisely the opposite. To Ericsson’s surprise, he discovered that in the clinics that were using his process, couples were choosing girls over boys, increasingly at a rate of 2 to 1. Ericsson recounted how the couples who choose IVF became more shameless in voicing their preferences. At first, women calling his clinics would “apologize and shyly explain that they already had two boys.” Now, he says, “[T]hey just call and [say] outright, ‘I want a girl.’” Data backs up Ericsson’s experiences. One study showed that 64 percent of IVF patients who selected the sex of their child wanted a female child. Likewise, the creators of Nucleus Embryo have no idea how the application of their technology will play out.
The product represents another massive leap into unknown possibilities. Nucleus Genomics’ press release stated that “longevity was never just about health. It’s about thriving.” They boasted that their announcement “marks the first time in human history a company has openly partnered with a couple to help them optimize their embryos based on intelligence.”
The first couple to use Nucleus Embryo created 20 embryos and asked, “[W]hich of the 20 embryos should we implant?” They lauded the product for giving them “a report on which embryos were likely to grow into adults with a long healthy life. Importantly, Nucleus also told us which embryos were likely to grow into adults with above average cognitive abilities.” Choosing between embryos based on IQ potential and other traits is Nucleus Embryo’s unique selling point.
Eugenics is not simply an accidental feature of Nucleus Genomics’ new product. It was always the point. It is not just the point of Nucleus Embryo, but of the whole thrust of the IVF industry.
When we evaluate IVF and the new technologies by which it is practiced, we should keep Lewis’ insights in mind. He warned that by means of “selective breeding,” future generations “are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer…. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.”
Man’s future is at stake. While companies like Nucleus Genomics argue that it is “not [the people’s] choice to make” whether people should have access to their products, there truly is not a more political question than the future of eugenics technologies. It is in fact lawmakers’ jobs to determine whether we are to continue down the path of eugenics, and conservatives should reconsider mindlessly expanding the IVF industry at taxpayers’ expense. As a political community, we must reconsider what technology is really for.
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