A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement.

The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 (£38,000) for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points.

Selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ is not permitted under UK law. While it is legal in the US, where embryology is more loosely regulated, IQ screening is not yet commercially available there.

Asked for comment, managers at Heliospect said the company, which is incorporated in the US, operated within all applicable law and regulations. They said Heliospect was in “stealth mode” before a planned public launch and was still developing its service. They added that clients who screened fewer embryos were charged about $4,000, and that pricing on launch would be in line with competitors.

Leading geneticists and bioethicists said the project raised a host of moral and medical issues.

A Heliospect employee, who has been helping the company recruit clients, outlined how couples could rank up to 100 embryos based on “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants”, including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness.

Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society, in California, said: “One of the biggest problems is that it normalises this idea of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ genetics.” The rollout of such technologies, she said, “reinforces the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes”.

For Michael Christensen, Heliospect’s Danish CEO and a former financial markets trader, genetic selection promises a bright future. “Everyone can have all the children they want and they can have children that are basically disease-free, smart, healthy; it’s going to be great,” he boasted during a video call in November 2023.

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This technology is wonderful. I see zero moral problem with making healthy, intelligent embryos for those who want them. There is no question this tech will advance rapidly and soon be widely used. Besides making healthier and smarter people, it will also end lineage and race conceits as, eventually, genes will be sharable across lineages. Not so far in the future the day will come when parents can select traits from brochures. ABN