I can’t overstate how much I’m growing to despise the tech bro mindset, the core tenet of which seems to be we should do everything that we’re able to do, and to hell with the consequences. If we do end up living in that most accurate of dystopias – Brave New World – it will be because of these people.
My hackles are up in relation to this because of this week’s announcement from American company, Nucleus Genomics, which is launching its new service, Nucleus Embryo.
“The first genetic optimization software that helps parents pursuing IVF see and understand the complete genetic profile of each of their embryos,” the press release reads.
Founder and CEO Kian Sadeghi said upon announcing Nucleus Embryo that, “Longevity is now for embryos,” and that it’s intended to help parents “give their children the best possible start in life — long before they’re even born”.
I can’t even begin to explain how confused this mindset is, but I’ll attempt to do so shortly.
What Nucleus Embryo does is offer parents undergoing IVF the possibility of analysing and comparing up to 20 embryos across over 900 hereditary conditions, as well as 40 different metrics beyond basic viability, “spanning cancers, chronic conditions, appearance, cognitive ability, mental health, and more”.
In other words, it offers those undergoing IVF greater choice than ever before, by enabling them to see in greater detail than ever before how each embryo is likely to turn out. It’s the best shot so far of keeping the best and dumping the rest, to put it crudely.
As one social media user said in response to the news, “you don’t have to pick the smartest embryo, or the tallest, but someone else will. selection becomes survival. and once that begins, there’s no going back”.
“The logic is inevitable: if you can reduce your child’s odds of chronic disease if you can choose the embryo with the longest healthspan if the tech exists why wouldn’t you use it?,” they asked.
Why indeed.
In his announcement of their new product, Sadeghi shared at least some of the emotional background underlying his own motivation for producing it:
“My parents are immigrants from Iran who came to America with nothing but a conviction that me and my siblings would have more. But when my 15-year-old cousin suddenly died in her sleep from a preventable genetic disease, my family was powerless to save her.
“My parents, grieving the loss of my cousin, were also terrified. What if my siblings and I were at the same risk? That was the first time I understood what generational health meant.
“Our users don’t just do Nucleus for themselves — they do it for themselves and their loved ones. Now, I’m proud to say that care can start before a child is even born.”
Ok, are we to take from this that it would have been better if his 15-year-old cousin was screened out at the beginning, in favour of a more perfect specimen who wouldn’t have died in their sleep from a preventable genetic disease? Because that’s very much what’s implied.
It is, at bottom, a eugenic product.
Sadeghi is very much opposed to that framing though, describing it as “crazy”, and asking, “since when is preventative medicine eugenics”?
“And if a couple exercises their right to choose their own embryo based on what matter most to them…that’s eugenics?” he further asked.
Yes, Kian, what you’re describing is very much eugenics, because typically when it comes to having children, you don’t choose anything about them. You welcome them as they are. When your product is offering parents the opportunity to consider the likely eye and hair colour of their future child, you’ve most definitely strayed out of the realm of “preventative medicine” and into the realm of aesthetics.
I don’t typically like blanket statements, but I think it’s safe to say that anything that contributes to the idea that ‘deficiencies’ or ‘shortcomings’ ought to be screened out of the human population is genuinely harmful to those living with such conditions, and those still to come who’ll carry these particular crosses. Because as sure as night follows day, some luddites will go against logic and choose to have their children in the dark, as it were, refusing the omniscience and omnipotence that modern technology affords us.
It’s just the latest example of how the relentless drive to innovate is blinding, to an almost comical degree.
A more humorous example of that dynamic, perhaps, is to be found in the origins of Palantir Technologies’ name, a company that’s been under the spotlight recently following its extensive intelligence deal with President Trump.
This will come as no surprise to fans of The Lord of the Rings, but the word ‘Palantir’ has its origin in Tolkien’s world. It is a magical seeing stone (the word ‘Palantir’ means ‘far-seeing’ in one of the languages of Middle Earth) that enables users to observe events and places from afar, and also to communicate with the other users of the stones.
However, the danger of these seeing stones lies in the fact that what’s revealed isn’t necessarily reliable, or even safe, as users of sufficient power are capable of manipulating their workings. In the story, the Dark Lord Sauron essentially uses them as a window into the lives of their other users, corrupting and controlling them from a distance.
That would be the main association your average LOTR fan would have with the word, Palantir. And yet tech giant Peter Thiel and his buddies thought that sounded a-ok and ran with it.
I’m not suggesting that Palantir Technologies is controlled by the Dark Lord Sauron or otherwise, but I am very much suggesting that the tech bro’s vision appears to be somewhat clouded. What is obviously bad to many is not so to them.
Their stairway to heaven, I would say, is looking entirely like a highway to hell.