TODAY Show promotes eugenics-based IVF as 'hope'

The TODAY Show recently featured a fertility start-up that promotes eugenics as part of in vitro fertilization (IVF), telling the story of a couple who wanted to avoid giving birth to another child with disabilities. The start-up's founder believes that one day soon, most people will choose IVF (and screening for certain characteristics) instead of conceiving the natural way — "Gattaca" in real life.

Key Takeaways:

• TODAY noted that the daughter of a couple has a congential condition known as lissencephaly, or "smooth brain disorder," that was missed during routine testing for their "natural" pregnancy.

• When considering having more children, the couple turned to Orchid Health, which allows couples to potentially screen out numerous conditions and disorders.

• The start-up has been criticized for commodifying children as well as promoting eugenics.

The Details:

Speaking with Morgan Radford, the Crownover family discussed the shock of learning their daughter had a serious neurological disorder. "We did all of the tests available," Joy Beth Crownover explained, confirming that nothing unusual showed up. After Mia was born, that changed. "She started to have seizures at eight months and then all of her overnight hospitalizations," Adam said. "I would say the first year of life, those were four really tough months."

Lissencephaly is an incurable, rare birth defect in which the brain is smooth instead of wrinkled, and the prognosis varies depending on how severe the individual case is. While some children with lissencephaly do not survive past age 10, this varies, as the disorder exists on a spectrum. People with lissencephaly typically have developmental delays and intellectual disabilities.

Intending to avoid conceiving another child like Mia, the Crownovers have turned to Orchid Health, which claims it can sequence the entire genome, allowing parents to "screen out" children with not just serious disabilities, but even unwanted characteristics if they wish.

Radford visited a fertility clinic to learn about Orchid's process. Orchid Health CEO Noor Siddiqui told her:

"The testing that's available today on embryos really just looks at something called chromosomes. So what Orchid is able to do is actually read that entire genome to scan for many, many thousands more anomalies or genetic conditions that could affect a future baby."

Of course, an embryo isn't a future baby; he or she is a human being who has already been come into existence. The embryo already has all of his or her genetics and traits determined — sex, race, hair and eye color, and his or her own individual DNA — and only needs time to grow.

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Zoom In:

When Radford asked Siddiqui what her response would be to allegations that Orchid is playing God, she likened the screening out of humans for elimination to wearing a seatbelt.

"What I'd say is, you know, do we think we're playing God when we put a seat belt, or a car seat in the car, or when we go get chemotherapy when someone's diagnosed with cancer, right?" she said. "All of civilization is using the latest and greatest science and medicine to improve people's lives."

Except this science Siddiqui is using creating lives and then killing them if it is decided that they are 'defective.'

"I think that it's wrong to stigmatize this type of screening, especially when these people are... coming because they specifically want to minimize the chance that their child is going to be affected by these diseases," she said.

The Crownovers are one such family, and currently, they are pregnant with their second child — one selected after embryos with undesirable traits were screened out.

"It's actually a huge relief," Joy Beth said. "I think especially where we are right now in the process, I think that we have a lot of hope that we're on the right path."

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Why It Matters:

Companies like Orchid are contributing to the commodification of children, turning them from human beings into products to manufactured to a purchaser's exact specifications.

To be clear, Orchid isn't just advertising the ability to screen out deadly diseases which can drastically decrease a person's lifespan. It claims to be able to test for numerous things, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and even the chance of developing heart disease later in life.

The average age for the onset of Alzheimer’s is in the 60s, so if an embryo theoretically was found to have a higher risk for Alzheimer’s, parents could choose to destroy that life, simply because their child might develop Alzheimer's as an elderly adult. Only embryos with the highest quality grade are considered worthy of life.

Type 1 diabetes is a treatable condition that does not prevent someone from living a fulfilling life, and most children with congenital heart disease (CHD) live to be adults. That conditions such as these are included as possibilities to be screened out is revealing.

This isn’t about safeguarding a future child’s health; it is eugenics in action. Couples are now being told they have not only the ability, but the right to engineer and manufacture children to be exactly who and what they want them to be.

Children with disabilities, birth defects, or unwanted genetic conditions are no longer welcome.

Siddiqui founded Orchid because her mother has a condition causing gradual vision loss — retinitis pigmentosa — and Orchid screens embryos out for having the very condition Siddiqui's own mother had. Live Action News previously noted Siddiqui's attitude toward reproduction in an article about eugenics involved in IVF:

Preimplantation genetic testing (P.G.T.) is currently used in over half of IVF cycles in the U.S. to test for missing or extra chromosomes, structural chromosomal rearrangements, and conditions like cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy. Embryos that test positive are destroyed.

... [S]ome fertility companies have started offering P.G.T.-P. screening for polygenic risk scores — the chance of developing conditions later in life, such as heart disease. The technology has been used to assess adults’ chances of developing certain conditions to help them change their habits in hopes of decreasing that risk. For embryos, however, risk assessment could lead to destruction, even though that elevated risk may not ever translate into a diagnosis.

Though the accuracy and efficacy of P.G.T.-P have been called into question, Siddiqui envisions a future in which it becomes the norm to screen embryos for genetic conditions, as well as autism, obesity, and height, in addition to their propensity to develop other health conditions, both physical and mental.

“Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,” [Siddiqui] said. “It’s going to become insane not to screen for these things.”

The Bottom Line:

It is impossible to engineer a life free of disease, pain, and suffering. Even if a child is born perfectly healthy, there is no guarantee they will remain that way. And more importantly, what does it say about our society when children can be created, and then destroyed, just on the mere chance they might have a condition that parents deem unsatisfactory?