Nucleus Genomics CEO Kian Sadeghi defends IVF Plus, a $30,000 test that screens embryos for disease risk, height, intelligence, and other traits. Parents can test up to 128 samples at once. Sadeghi says DNA isn't destiny, but the service faces criticism over designer baby concerns.
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Big leaps in science are presenting parents with choices that were once impossible: screening the DNA of embryos to help pick a future child with lower risks of disease and higher odds of being taller or even smarter. But now that we can do it, should we? CBS Morning's co-host Tony Dokoupil spoke with a young CEO who's shaking up the worlds of science and ethics.
That's why today I'm excited to announce IVF Plus.
Kian Sadeghi made headlines this year when his company Nucleus Genomics offered to screen embryos for risk of disease and much, much more.
We look at something like height, even eye color, hair color. Intelligence. Intelligence. We give you acne. Acne, yeah.
The idea, he says, is to help deliver not just a healthier child, but in the eyes of mom and dad, a more desirable child too.
They want us to be well-educated. They want us to thrive. Life, I think, as a parent, Doesn't just stop at, I want my child to be healthy.
At this sprawling facility in central New Jersey—
How much lab space do you have here?
Oh, it's huge.
Nucleus scans samples of embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization. For about $30,000, parents can see the results. Depression, bipolar, autism. Wow.
Autism, yeah.
Before picking one to implant.
Our predictors can better predict Longevity from the embryo's DNA than any other genetic model ever built.
But as his company grows—
You can run 128 samples on this at a time.
With a splashy new ad campaign inviting parents to have your best baby, the field of reproductive genetics itself is an ethical mess, according to the MIT Technology Review. You use the term your best baby,
whatever that means to you,
right? But no one's going to sit there and choose,
I want a short, acne-prone, anxiety-ridden person with bad eyesight and no ability in sports.
Well, similarly today, people are gonna say, hey, I don't want a baby with cystic fibrosis. I don't want a baby with Down syndrome. And in the same way, that's their choice.
Whether you agree, Sadeghi says he is not, in fact, creating a new class of superhumans.
Because DNA is not destiny, the messiness of life, the nurture element of life, right? How hard your child works, you know, what school they go to, All those factors are never, ever going to go away.
