Embryos are chosen by a genetic score for traits, not disease

Fertility clinics have long tested embryos for single-gene diseases. Since 2019 companies have sold scores that add up thousands of small genetic differences to rank embryos by their risk of common diseases, and since 2025 two have sold rankings for traits that are not diseases at all: predicted height, predicted intelligence, eye colour. No regulator reviews these scores, the predictions are weak at the level of one embryo, and the practice is condemned by most of the field. It is on the tree because it is being done, to paying customers, through named clinics.

What would count

A company offers, and a named fertility clinic performs, selection among a couple's embryos using a score for a trait that is not a disease (height, intelligence, appearance), with the offer public on the company's own site; the rung in clinical use rests on that routine commercial availability, since no regulator has approved or forbidden it.

Who settles it: The companies' own announcements and product pages, the named clinics' statements, and any regulator's notice if one acts

Where it stands

In clinical use. Reached on 4 June 2025, on the record of mynucleus.com. Could move a stage within 1 to 5 years.

The last reading

Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.

• 16 October 2026 Nothing new

  Nothing in the window; no regulator has acted (an August 2025 law-firm review says none has). On the claim still to check, the launch date of 2025-06-04: secondary coverage supports it (a launch-video screenshot dated 2025-06-04 and a report that the service was unveiled on a Wednesday, which that date was), but the company's own release was not found, so the claim is not settled and stays on the list.

Notes

The record is Nucleus Genomics' own page for its embryo product, launched in June 2025 with scores for appearance and cognitive ability and later listing predicted IQ and height; a second company, Herasight, came out of hiding in July 2025 and announced an intelligence predictor for embryos in October 2025. The first baby chosen by a polygenic score (2020) was screened for disease risk only, so it does not count here. This is the one entry on the tree whose rung rests on a commercial offering rather than a regulator or a paper: the ladder's in-clinical-use rung allows "routine use in a named clinical setting", and the named clinic is in the companies' own announcements. If John would rather hold this rung for a regulator's say, the stage falls to first human on the same record, since customers have used the scores.