Abigail wrote last week about Nucleus, the company that has developed genetic optimization software to allow parents to screen embryos for 900 diseases and traits. As she points out, the software screens for everything from longevity to insomnia, male-pattern baldness, and eye color.
Nucleus can analyze up to 20 embryos at a time; it then ranks the embryos on specific criteria that parents desire. The Wall Street Journal ran a notable article in 2018 about the ethics behind choosing your child’s physical appearance: “Is It Ethical to Choose Your Baby’s Eye Color?” It’s a question geneticists have been forcing us to ask ourselves for years. It’s a question that just got more complicated with Nucleus’s ability to rank the desirability of unborn children.
When I was born, the first thing my mom looked for was my dad’s nose. The “Strack” nose is notorious for its inability to be rooted out of the bloodline. Our cousins, uncles, second cousins, and distant relatives all have the dreaded nose. For parents like mine, it’s the random traits — the ones they would never think to self-select — that they love about their children. Since I don’t have kids, I asked my colleagues what their favorite things about their children’s physical appearances were:
“The extent to which they bear a clear family resemblance to my wife, to me, or to our parents. Specifically, my wife’s eyes.”
“Big smile, masses of curly hair, and lankiness.”
“Strong cheekbones and jawline.”
“He has the most adorable dimple on just the one side of his face when he smiles.”
“His little nose. It’s a little bumpy.”
“His eyebrows.”
“His eyes.”
“Crazy bushy curly hair that is the main source of his power/identity.”
“They’re tall . . . and they look like teenage clones of me.”
Nucleus’s worst (and most lauded) feature is its ability to rank embryos. It takes 20 unborn children knowing that one will reign supreme. Trait testing may get good enough someday to select for that dimple on a kid’s left cheek, or the exact color brown present in your wife’s eyes, or the way a smile curves on one side of the face; but software can’t select for you the unexpected, quirky features parents adore and would never think to self-select.