Should human life be optimized?

Are we just as some other animals, ... to be bred for specific traits?

Excerpt: Orchid screens embryos’ DNA for hundreds of conditions, such as retinitis pigmentosa, which can be traced to a single genetic variant. But the company also goes further, offering what is known as polygenic screening, which gives parents what is essentially a risk profile on each embryo’s propensity for conditions such as heart disease, for which the genetic component is far more complex.

Today it is an expensive procedure offered to patients undergoing I.V.F., who are often but not always infertile couples seeking treatment. But Ms. Siddiqui — and others in Silicon Valley, where investors in and users of this technology abound — envision such comprehensive screening eventually replacing the old-fashioned way of having children altogether.

“Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,” she said in a video she shared on X. “It’s going to become insane not to screen for these things.”

“These things” presumably refers to conditions like obesity and autism, both of which Orchid says it can screen for. What she and others who run screening companies tend to talk about even less is that such things could also include traits like intellectual ability and height.