The day after the campaign launched, Sadeghi and I chatted briefly online. He was showing a phone app on the X where parents can click on features like eye color and hair color. I said it all sounds like Uber Eats – another valueless, frictionless future invented by entrepreneurs, but this time you’ll click for a child.
I agreed to meet Sadeghi at the station that night under a banner that read, “IQ is 50% genetic.” He showed up in a puffer jacket and told me the campaign would soon expand to 1,000 train cars. Not long ago, this was a secret technique to be whispered at Silicon Valley dinner parties. But now? He said, “Look at the stairs. The entire metro is genetic conditioning. We’re bringing it into the mainstream.” “I mean, like, we’re normalizing it, right?”
To generalize what exactly? The ability to choose embryos based on predicted characteristics could help people become healthier. But the traits mentioned in the subway—height and IQ—focus the public’s mind toward cosmetic choices and even naked discrimination. “I think people will read this and start to realize: Wow, this is now a choice I can make. I can have a taller, smarter, healthier child,” Sadeghi says.
Courtesy the author
Nucleus received its seed funding from Founders Fund, an investment firm known for its love of contrarian bets. And embryo scoring fits the bill – it’s an unpopular concept, and professional groups say genetic predictions are not reliable. Until now, major IVF clinics still refuse to offer these tests. Among other things, doctors worry that they will create unrealistic expectations for parents. What if little Johnny doesn’t perform as well on the SAT as his fetal scores predicted?
Advertising blitzes are one way to eliminate such gatekeepers: If a clinic does not agree to order the test, prospective parents may take their business elsewhere. Another embryo test company, Orchid, says high consumer demand encouraged Uber’s early forays into regulated taxi markets. “Doctors are essentially being pushed to use it, not because they want to, but because they will lose patients if they don’t,” Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui said during an online event last August.
