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(LifeSiteNews) — A team of academics has developed a tool to allow couples undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to select which embryos to implant, drawing criticism from bioethicists who warn it could create a “dystopian society.”
Herasight, a company co-founded by former Duke University lecturer Jonathan Anomaly, claims its product can predict an embryo’s likelihood of developing diseases such as glaucoma and Alzheimer’s. The company argues the technology gives parents more information about embryos created during IVF.
IVF typically yields 15 to 19 eggs, with around six reaching the blastocyst stage (typically under one week from fertilization). Clinics frequently destroy embryos judged to carry defects, according to IVF provider Reproductive Medicine Associates. Anomaly said his company does not coerce parents but provides genetic data for them to use in decision-making.
“There’s a big difference between murdering people in gas chambers, and, you know, giving people information about their embryos,” Anomaly told The College Fix. He dismissed comparisons to eugenics, though he previously published an essay titled Defending Eugenics that framed the term as “informed choice.”
Anomaly added that Herasight distances itself from companies such as Orchid Health, which explicitly promote embryo screening as a universal practice. “Our view is, look, if you’re doing IVF, and you’re probably getting some testing anyway, we can give you more information,” he said.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of the Bioethics, Technology, & Human Flourishing Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, criticized the practice in comments to The College Fix. “I do not consider this tool ethical,” he wrote in an email.
In a recent policy brief for the Heritage Foundation, Kheriaty warned that embryo-screening tools are often marketed as treatments for genetic disease, though they do not heal affected embryos. Instead, embryos identified as carrying risks are destroyed.
Kheriaty cautioned that genetic screening could be extended beyond disease prevention to the selection of traits such as intelligence, physical ability, or appearance, leading to “discriminatory eugenics practices.”
The Catholic Church has consistently condemned IVF and artificial fertilization as gravely immoral. In 1949, Pope Pius XII said “artificial fertilization, outside of marriage, is to be condemned outright as immoral,” adding that even in marriage the use of third-party intervention is “condemned without appeal.”
The Church also teaches that destruction of embryos constitutes the taking of innocent human life.
For now, Herasight maintains the tool is intended only to provide information to parents already pursuing IVF.
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