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Modern WisdomWhat Embryo Selection Means for Humanity - Dr Jonathan Anomaly
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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Embryo Selection, Genetics, And The Future Of Human Reproduction Explained
- Chris Williamson and Dr. Jonathan Anomaly discuss embryo selection using polygenic risk scores, clarifying how it differs from gene editing and traditional IVF embryo grading. They explore public fears around 'eugenics', the ethics of selecting for disease vs. intelligence, and how World War II taboos still shape Western attitudes to genetics. Anomaly explains the science and validation of polygenic scores, his company HeraCyte’s approach to democratizing the technology, and concerns about inequality, government coercion, and professional gatekeeping by doctors and regulators. The conversation also tackles deeper issues of personhood, determinism, parental guilt, social norms, and how different cultures and countries are likely to adopt or resist these technologies.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasEmbryo selection reveals existing genetic variation; it does not edit genes.
Anomaly stresses that HeraCyte’s process only scores and compares embryos already created during IVF, akin to replacing a doctor’s eyeballing of morphology with far richer genetic information, not adding or changing DNA.
Most people already accept genetic screening for disease, but balk at intelligence.
Survey data show ~70–75% of Americans support screening for disease versus ~40% for intelligence, reflecting deep moral taboos around mental traits and perceived judgments about person-worth, especially in Western post-war cultures.
All medicine is probabilistic, and polygenic scores are just another probability tool.
Doctors already make risk-based decisions on incomplete information; polygenic scores formalize and quantify genetic risk (e.g., for schizophrenia or diabetes) and can be validated by seeing how well they predict differences between adult siblings.
Good polygenic prediction must be transparently validated and ancestry-aware.
Anomaly argues any serious company should show how its scores are derived, how much variance they explain, and how accuracy changes across ancestries; otherwise patients risk making life-shaping decisions on “astrology-level” data.
Selecting against one disease often reduces several others due to shared genetics.
Their pleiotropy analysis suggests most genetic overlaps between traits are positive: e.g., lowering risk for severe depression may also lower risks for bipolar and schizophrenia, and selecting for higher intelligence correlates with broadly better health outcomes.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesWhat we’re doing is revealing more information about the natural genetic variation that exists in your embryos and letting you choose which one to implant.
— Dr. Jonathan Anomaly
Most people don’t think that someone who is healthier is morally superior to someone who’s less healthy.
— Dr. Jonathan Anomaly
All of medicine is probabilistic, and indeed all of life is.
— Dr. Jonathan Anomaly
Either you think that God is creating this condition where your body is just constantly aborting embryos, and that’s okay, but what God is not doing is allowing you to do the same thing before it’s even implanted.
— Dr. Jonathan Anomaly
We’re replacing chance with choice to some extent, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
— Dr. Jonathan Anomaly
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