This will never go to human trial.
There are companies right now making bank on embryo selection based on genetics, the next step is modifying genes instead of rolling a crap shoot and hoping to get what they want.
Funnily enough, such companies are funded by and led by some HN subcultures' favorite people, I would know because I was recruited by one of them who went out of their way to not mention that their marketing material to parents says they intend to let parents pick embryos based on perceived intelligence based on genetics.
Tldr: there are monied parties that want this and they literally cite Gattaca as their inspiration
This construct is a bit of a head-scratcher that takes away from the rest of your comment; "failed to mention" would've done the trick. As for Gattaca as a source of inspiration for future parents... yikes.
They emphasized certain genetic selections that sound good, but failed to mention that the leadership, investors, marketing and customers are actually really concerned with this one specific trait that sounds bad, that's selective omission.
You have to be of the right genetic origin because of the source data, but the truth is it's very risky to do embryo editing. It's hard to tell which way things will land. For all we know, gametogenesis may arrive first. And if that happens, then selection will suffice.
Can you explain what this means? After thinking it over, the most plausible reading to me is that they think the results will not generalize to other origins than the ones they have data for?
I met with Hsu before I realized who he was or what he was doing. A choice quote[2]:
> Testing embryos, however, is hugely controversial, because of both the scientific limitations of such polygenic scores and the prospect of designer babies. Undeterred, a company called Genomic Prediction last year began to offer to test cells plucked from an IVF embryo for millions of DNA markers to produce risk scores for some common diseases and for "intellectual disability" or low IQ. Co-founder Stephen Hsu, a physicist at Michigan State University in East Lansing who has branched into genomics, says that for now, the company is not returning genetic scores predicting high IQ because "society is not ready for it."
As for motivation:
> In July 2012, Michigan State University named him vice president for research and graduate studies. At the time, Inside Higher Ed and Lansing State Journal described the appointment as controversial, due to Hsu's comments endorsing research into using genetic modification to increase human intelligence, and his blog posts describing human race categorization as biologically valid.
And Hsu's cofounder[3]:
> Laurent Tellier, the founder of startup Genomic Predictions, used the 1997 movie “Gattaca” as inspiration for a DNA screening method that scores embryos with risk estimates for diabetes, heart disease, and other illnesses – and gives a report card on their predicted height and intelligence.
There's also Thiel investments in some people with questionable histories[4] when it comes to IQ PGS.
If you look at who is pushing for this, a lot of them are LessWrong and IDW adjacent, and they're selling to their audiences who believe strongly in things like IQ, genetic determinism and race. They take it very seriously.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/what-is-geno...
[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/screening-embryos-iq...
[3] https://nypost.com/2019/11/09/genetic-test-aims-to-predict-a...
[4] https://undark.org/2023/10/27/consumer-genetic-testing-scien...
Technically, 99% of Down's cases aren't hereditary (it's a spontaneous mitotic change), so you don't "improve the gene pool" by excluding it; as far as we know, basically anybody can have a kid with Down's syndrome if the mitotic dice come up snake eyes.
(But in the sense most people understand the term? Yes.)
Just because something is labeled "eugenics" doesn’t automatically make it bad or good—outcomes depend on how ideas are applied.
Historically, eugenics didn’t have genetic tools, so efforts focused on social policies, like promoting abortion or family planning, to influence who could reproduce.