1/ Today we launch an ambitious paper on the ethics of embryo screening. While the technology is new, our hopes and fears about our future children are as old as the Greek myths, including stories about Hera, goddess of fertility and the namesake of our company @herasight

Surfing at The Wedge, Newport Beach June 9th, 2026

A lot of people seem to be thinking the 99.99th percentile here means the 99.99th percentile of the IQ distribution. This is just showing the quantiles of the embryo PGS compared to the reference distribution. When translated into predicted IQ it looks like the below image. A mean of about 2SDs above average but with substantial uncertainty. Note Herasight's prediction model also takes into account parental phenotypes and regression to the mean, important for getting the mean prediction right but not relevant for predicting differences for a quantitative outcome. The important point is that this particular case shows there can be really substantial variation in predicted IQ from embryo testing in an individual family, around 1.6SDs. Most families won't have enough embryos to observe that range, but it's certainly a possible outcome for some.

The predicted IQ spread between their top and bottom embryo is ~24 points. People often underestimate how much siblings can differ genetically. We do more than IQ: we also screen for common diseases and NDDs such as severe autism. Book a call if you’d like to learn more: herasight.com/get-access

@JonathanAnomaly said embryo genetics is moving beyond monogenic screening toward polygenic prediction validated within families, with IVG, gene editing, and synthetic chromosomes now back in the conversation. #SynBioBeta #Biotech

"[P]arents who choose the embryo with the highest CogPGT score could expect an average IQ boost for their children of up to nine points." stevestewartwilliams.com/p/s…

Herasight does genetic testing of embryos, but we keep discovering people’s unknown medical conditions as a side-effect of our work. A few months ago we sequenced the genome of one of our employees and discovered he had an unusually high risk of psoriasis. He had a higher risk than 97% of the general population, largely thanks to the presence of HLA-C*06:02/PSORS1. For years, his mother had been suffering from a mysterious illness causing increasingly severe neck and back pain. It would often take her an hour or more to get out of bed in the morning. She had seen doctors multiple times over the years and described her symptoms, but they chalked it up to age-related mechanical back pain. She was told to get a different pillow and to replace her mattress. None of it helped. Her symptoms continued to worsen and her daily dose of pain relievers continued to climb. When our employee received his genetic risk report, he immediately began to wonder whether his high risk might be connected to her symptoms. Sure enough, when we sequenced her genome, his suspicions were confirmed. Her risk was higher than that of 99.3% of the general population! She immediately visited a rheumatologist and was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis! The doctor put her on a DMARD, which has finally improved her symptoms. But what about his children? Will they inherit his high risk of this disease, just like he did from his mother? Fortunately, the answer is probably not! When we looked at his embryos we found not only do some have lower risk than him, one actually has a risk even lower than average! If you’ve got a family history of some disease you want to avoid passing on to your kids, please reach out! We can often help you lower that risk for your children. cal.com/team/herasight-inc/h…

Doing properly calibrated and powerful risk predictions from genome data is hard and shouldn't be left to general AI agents. It's a failure of the consumer genomics industry that rich people resort to this rather than getting properly validated commercial reports.

My full interview on TBPN where I talk about: -polygenic prediction in IVF -regulation of genetic testing in IVF -the utility of biobanks -my own experience as a cancer patient -the future of reproductive medicine A much better discussion than Kian Sadeghi on Tucker...

How powerful is polygenic testing for diseases in IVF? My answer from my recent @tbpn interview.

Recent talk on why biological intelligence matters in a world of artificial intelligence:

This week, @ICAJournal published a major article by @Herasight scientists (@_twolfram et al.) on using "polygenic scores" (scores based on a person's DNA, abbreviated PGS) to predict intelligence, health diagnoses, and life outcomes. Here's a quick summary of their findings: ✅The PGS predicted intelligence pretty well: r = .45. (To put this in perspective, socioeconomic status usually predicts IQ at r ≈ .20 to .30). ✅Higher PGSs for IQ also predicted better higher occupational prestige (2nd image) and better mental health outcomes (3rd image). ✅The PGSs were less predictive for people with non-European ancestry (especially African Americans), which is expected. ✅The PGSs were equally predictive across the range of socioeconomic statuses (4th image), which is evidence against the Scarr-Rowe effect that predicts that genes will have a weaker influence in low-SES individuals than middle- and upper-class individuals. These findings have major practical and theoretical implications. From a practical perspective, Herasight is an embryo selection company. This study means that when their customers select the smartest embryo during in vitro fertilization, they are also generally picking a future child that has better mental health and a more prestigious occupation as an adult. It sounds like sci-fi, but it is reality today. From a theoretical perspective, this study reveals a lot about the genetic architecture of the psychological traits: generally, the same genes that make a brain smarter also make it less susceptible to mental health diagnoses. Read the full article (with no paywall) here: icajournal.scholasticahq.com…

The legendary @AlexTISYoung on @tbpn today:

Happy Friday. On today's show: - @chadjanis (Grüns) - @dunn (Pie) - @alextisyoung (UCLA & Herasight) - @Jason_Lil_Kim (Firefly Aerospace) - @jordanbramble (Antares Industries) - @joshuareeves (Gusto) See you on the stream.

Parents already make genetic decisions about the traits of their kids when they select a partner. Now those choices are becoming more conscious. @herasight is building polygenic scores that predict traits and diseases across diverse ancestries. Looking forward to hearing @JonathanAnomaly Anomaly at #SynBioBeta 2026. Visit the SynBioBeta website to read the full article. synbiobeta.com/read/herasigh…

In Nazaré, Portugal, surfer Sebastian Steudtner rode a 26.2-meter wave, setting a new world record for big wave surfing. An unbelievable feat!

Today the worlds most powerful genetic predictor of IQ, CogPGT, has been published in the peer reviewed journal Intelligence and Cognitive Abilities. When used for embryo screening, it can substantially boost expected IQ of future offspring. Read on for the scientific details!

Today I'm releasing the internet’s most comprehensive guide on how to have genetically enhanced children via IVF and polygenic embryo screening.

This week, the Herasight team presented three papers at the ACMG Annual Meeting in Baltimore. The work addresses three important contributions to the science of PGT-P: 1. Validation of polygenic predictors 2. Type 1 diabetes risk modeling 3. Embryo genome imputation 🧵