In August Siddiqui made the controversial suggestion that parents who choose not to use genetic testing might be considered irresponsible. “Just be honest: you’re okay with your kid potentially suffering for life so you can feel morally superior …” she wrote on X.
Americans have varied opinions on the emerging technology. In 2024, a group of bioethicists surveyed 1,627 US adults to determine attitudes toward a variety of polygenic testing criteria. A large majority approved of testing for physical health conditions like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Screening for mental health disorders, like depression, OCD, and ADHD, drew a more mixed—but still positive—response. Appearance-related traits, like skin color, baldness, and height, received less approval as something to test for.
Intelligence was among the most contentious traits—unsurprising given the way it has been weaponized throughout history and the lack of cultural consensus on how it should even be defined. (In many countries, intelligence testing for embryos is heavily regulated; in the UK, the practice is banned outright.) In the 2024 survey, 36.9% of respondents approved of preimplantation genetic testing for intelligence, 40.5% disapproved, and 22.6% said they were uncertain.
Despite the disagreement, intelligence has been among the traits most talked about as targets for testing. From early on, Genomic Prediction says, it began receiving inquiries “from all over the world” about testing for intelligence, according to Diego Marin, the company’s head of global business development and scientific affairs.
At one time, the company offered a predictor for what it called “intellectual disability.” After some backlash questioning both the predictive capacity and the ethics of these scores, the company discontinued the feature. “Our mission and vision of this company is not to improve [a baby], but to reduce risk for disease,” Marin told me. “When it comes to traits about IQ or skin color or height or something that’s cosmetic and doesn’t really have a connotation of a disease, then we just don’t invest in it.”
Orchid, on the other hand, does test for genetic markers associated with intellectual disability and developmental delay. But that may not be all. According to one employee of the company, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, intelligence testing is also offered to “high-roller” clients. According to this employee, another source close to the company, and reporting in the Washington Post, Musk used Orchid’s services in the conception of at least one of the children he shares with the tech executive Shivon Zilis. (Orchid, Musk, and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment.)
I met Kian Sadeghi, the 25-year-old founder of New York–based Nucleus Genomics, on a sweltering July afternoon in his SoHo office. Slight and kinetic, Sadeghi spoke at a machine-gun pace, pausing only occasionally to ask if I was keeping up.
Sadeghi had modified his first organism—a sample of brewer’s yeast—at the age of 16. As a high schooler in 2016, he was taking a course on CRISPR-Cas9 at a Brooklyn laboratory when he fell in love with the “beautiful depth” of genetics. Just a few years later, he dropped out of college to build “a better 23andMe.”
