From Ewan Birney's blog:
This week (May 20th 2019) has seen yet another splash by an American company offering a polygenic trait score on embryos including intelligence. This is wrong on a number of levels; ethically it is wrong to make this decision as an independent laboratory without broad societal buy in; scientifically it is wrong to imagine the ways we assess polygenic traits will translate into safe and effective embryo selection; for the specifics of IQ/Educational attainment trait this trait is so complex this is additionally unwise over and above any concerns.
I would not recommend it either as a member of society or as a genomic scientist. This blog aims to unpack this more.
Ethics. First off it is important to realise that as science progresses in biology – and in particular reproductive biology – we develop the possibility that we can perform actions that as a society we consider wrong. There is nothing new for this; for example, ultrasound scanning allows one to reliably sex foetus early on in pregnancy; however parental choice of sex of the child is either explicitly illegal or implicitly prohibited in most locations. As we learn more about genetics, we will be able to make more sophisticated choices of what we could do, but it is important that we make the decision about what we should do as responsible members of society...
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