"Some fertility issues are a sort of quality control system for our species."

I am not discounting your argument, but quality isn't a stable value. A short-sighted or asthmatic person in a hunter-gatherer society might have been useless; nowadays, they may be an excellent engineer or doctor.

With technology like the one being described in the article, you actually have a much higher chance of producing viable embryos free of known genetic problems.

Dependence on technology, well, it is sorta dangerous, but also unavoidable. For example, the # of people who produce their own food is very small in the West. And that small number would become almost zero if we added further constraints (as in "don't use any industrially produced chemicals in the process").

Our ancestors from 200 years ago would probably consider us unviable.

(And the actual hunters and gatherers would consider them unviable. What, you depend on good weather and rain not to starve?)

If we put all-natural you, with no products of technology, at a random point on Earth, you'll be dead before the search party finds you.

By the same argument you could also argue that certain genetic traits are part of the "quality control system". E.g. Before the modern era having a gene that makes you disabled would lower your chance of reproduction.

This is an extremely dangerous path to set out on.

We have already completely changed human evolution, and I would argue with great success. Do we really want to start undoing this?

Biologically a healthy woman can have kids well into her 50s and even 60s yet her eggs reserve starts to deplete the moment they are born, accelerating exponentially as they approach 40.

From an evolutionary point of view this could have made sense 200 years ago when the lifespan of a human was 45 years.

Our bodies are not perfect and we have been able to understand and to certain degree fix many issues with it such as infectious and cardiovascular diseases and some types of cancers.

For example we never saw polio as a quality control system for our species.

Our understanding of infertility and methods to treat it have remained unchanged for decades.

We basically pump an awful amount of drugs into a woman's body hoping to harvest a few good eggs via surgery.

It is a brutal and painful process, physically, emotionally and financially that most times has very poor odds of succeeding.

If we can do the same with a few drops of blood, removing the drugs, the cost and the randomness of the current procedures while increasing the odds 10x, this would be an amazing feat of science in a positive way.

There is an growing body of evidence that points to change in environmental conditions (ubiquity of microplastics, forever chemicals, etc.) as a significant driver of infertility. I guess you could make the argument that humans just need to adapt or die. It seems a little Victorian. "Then they should do it and reduce the surplus population" kind of thing. Say no to your inner Scrooge. Life is sad and hard and complicated and exciting and wonderful and absolutely worth living. Babies are wonderful, children are hard, teenagers are a nightmare, and I absolutely don't want to die alone.

Millions of years of biology have brought us nearly to the point where we can take the evolution of our species into our own hands. We're new at this and like any other human endeavor in its earliest days are bound to make some horrible mistakes. So the arguments toward caution are well-justified.

We've yet to prove our civilization is responsible enough to handle such consequential abilities - e.g. nuclear arms, climate change, genetic engineering.

But I anticipate several generations from now, today's cultural taboo will be ancient history and our "meddling", "treatments", whatever you label it will be just another aspect of humanity that has been normalized. I bet my progeny will be able to go and get a tail just as easily as someone today would acquire a tattoo.

"Perhaps new humans have a right not to be produced"

The problem is asserting such right on behalf of someone not yet born. Personally, I couldn't just demand that someone not be born because of my own opinions regarding technology. I just don't feel justified to deny other people procreation.

And remember, in the 1980s, there were similar attitudes towards "regular" IVF. Frankenstein, ungodly, lab kids etc. Fortunately these prejudices mostly died out.

Though obviously it could be no other way, it's always struck me as odd that new humans can never consent to their creation, no matter the method. One of many reasons I will never create one.