Have Your Best Baby

Polygenic embryo screening has been quietly commercial since 2019, sold by a handful of firms as a way to flag which of a couple's IVF embryos carries the lowest genetic risk of, say, diabetes or schizophrenia. Nucleus Genomics took the same statistics and built a consumer product around the part the older vendors avoided: a sortable interface that scores each embryo on appearance and predicted intelligence alongside disease, and invites parents to rank and choose. Its November ad campaign said the quiet thing out loud — "Have Your Best Baby."

Nucleus launched with help from one of the original screening firms — which then sued it in federal court for stealing trade secrets. The collaborator became the plaintiff.

The science underneath is the same disputed math the establishment has already rejected for clinical use. A polygenic score is a weighted sum of thousands of common gene variants; for traits like IQ or height it explains only a slice of the outcome, and selecting among a handful of sibling embryos — who share most of their DNA — moves the dial far less than the marketing implies. The American College of Medical Genetics calls these tests not yet appropriate for medicine. Named geneticists were blunter: one called it the new eugenics, two compared the 25-year-old founder to Elizabeth Holmes.

The sharpest detail isn't the ethics seminar, it's the business record. Nucleus launched the product with help from Genomic Prediction, one of the original screening firms — which then sued it in federal court for stealing trade secrets. The collaborator became the plaintiff. That a year-old launch is still being re-promoted as breaking news, through an investor's email blast, tells you which part of this is actually moving: not the science, the sales funnel.