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// FILES  //  2026-05-30

Embryo Scoring, Epstein's Money, and the 143-Year Ideology Now Sold in Fertility Clinics

// TL;DR

I traced the intellectual lineage of polygenic embryo scoring, a service now sold at over 100 US fertility clinics, from Francis Galton's 1883 eugenics through Nick Bostrom's 2014 Oxford paper, Jeffrey Epstein's $120,000 donation to Bostrom's organization, and the 23andMe bankruptcy that sent 15 million Americans' genetic data through liquidation court. The framework behind the score on that fertility clinic spreadsheet has five names in 143 years. The core belief never moved.

// CHAPTERS

  1. 0:29The Spreadsheet in the Consultation Room — I open with the scene that started this investigation: a couple in a fertility clinic looking at a spreadsheet where one column, predicted cognitive ability, costs $2,000 and wasn't there five years ago. MIT Technology Review called it a 2026 breakthrough. Over 100 US clinics offer it now.
  2. 1:36Five Names, One Belief: 143 Years of Eugenics — I trace the core claim, that some humans are worth more and someone should decide who gets born, from Francis Galton's 1883 coining of eugenics through the 2014 Oxford paper to the 2019 commercial product. The word changed five times. The belief never moved.
  3. 3:00Cold Spring Harbor and the Forced Sterilization Record — I document that 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in documented eugenics programs and that the last US state institution sterilization happened in 1981. Cold Spring Harbor, the 1910 headquarters of that movement, will host the CRISPR Frontiers conference in August 2026.
  4. 4:2123andMe Bankruptcy: 15 Million Genomes Go to Auction — I cover how 23andMe's March 2025 bankruptcy sent 15 million people's genetic data through liquidation court, where HIPAA doesn't apply and bankruptcy law treats DNA as a transferable corporate asset. Regeneron's $256 million bid was blocked; Wojcicki's nonprofit TTAM ultimately won at $305 million.
  5. 10:01The 2023 Hack and Ethnically Targeted Data — I report on the 2023 breach of 6.9 million accounts and a 2024 lawsuit alleging that Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish customers' data was specifically targeted and sold in curated lists, drawing a documented historical parallel that I think is important to name plainly.
  6. 16:17Stolen Children's DNA: The NIH Data Misuse Investigation — I cover the New York Times investigation revealing how Bryan Pesta and a fringe network obtained NIH data from 20,000 children across the ABCD study and Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, produced at least 16 race-ranking papers, and had those papers cited by Elon Musk's Grok chatbot as legitimate science. Parents were never told.
  7. 18:19What Is and Isn't True: A Factual Baseline — I separate documented fact from circulating misinformation, confirming that current embryo selection yields roughly 2.5 predicted IQ points, that polygenic selection operates in a regulatory vacuum distinct from germline editing bans, and that claims of government acquisition of 23andMe data are unverified.
  8. 20:37The 2014 Oxford Paper and the Logic of Iterated Embryo Selection — I examine Bostrom and Shulman's 2014 paper proposing iterated embryo selection using in vitro gametogenesis, which projected IQ gains of up to 130 points across compressed generations, and Bostrom's framing of this as what 'responsible enlightened couples' would choose.
  9. 27:31Genomic Prediction, Stephen Hsu, and the First Commercial Product — I trace how Hsu, cited in the 2014 paper, co-founded Genomic Prediction in 2019, predicted Silicon Valley billionaires would be first adopters doing IVF specifically to access selection technology, and resigned from Michigan State in 2020 amid scientific racism accusations.
  10. 34:54Epstein's Money and the Transhumanist Funding Network — I map Epstein's $120,000 to the World Transhumanist Association, his sustained relationships with Ben Goertzel and the Singularity Summit, his 2018 invitation to a Bostrom event three years after his second arrest, and his reported plan to seed the human race with his own DNA at a New Mexico breeding facility.
  11. 36:55The Closed Circle: Open Philanthropy, IVG, and George Church — I close the funding loop: Open Philanthropy, advised by Shulman, funds longtermist philosophy and directed $6.5 million to IVG research in mice; Jaan Tallinn backs Conception, the IVG company; George Church, who received Epstein funding and sits on BGI's board, joined Lila Sciences in 2025.
  12. 46:06Longtermism, Dysgenic Pressures, and Bostrom's Published Worldview — I examine how longtermism's published logic subordinates present suffering to speculative future optimization, how Bostrom listed 'dysgenic pressures' as an existential risk, and how his 1996 racist emails and 2014 embryo selection paper form a consistent through-line when read in sequence.
  13. 56:17You Are Already Inside This System — I turn the lens on the audience: DNA test users, IVF patients, parents of any child born in a US hospital in the last 30 years. Newborn blood spot data went to state databases; Texas gave samples to the Department of Defense. Your relative's DNA test creates your genetic exposure without your participation.
  14. 1:02:11A Scenario Built From Existing Technology — I walk through a 2028 scenario grounded entirely in current or actively developing technology: newborn screening, school cognitive profiling, embryo-selected siblings, IVG expanding selection pools from 5 embryos to 500, and the market pressure that makes opting out a signal rather than a choice.
  15. 1:08:57Who Designed the Spreadsheet — I close by returning to the consultation room. The informed consent form covers the medical procedure. It does not cover the 143-year intellectual history of the scoring algorithm, the Epstein funding, or the published belief that some humans are better positioned to decide what 'improved' means.

The Spreadsheet in the Fertility Clinic: What That Number Actually Costs

The room is clean. The lighting is warm. The doctor is kind. On the screen between you and the physician is a spreadsheet: each row a potential child, each column a prediction. Risk of diabetes, risk of heart disease. And then, further to the right, a number that wasn't on that spreadsheet five years ago: predicted cognitive ability.

The company that generated those numbers will charge you about $2,000. They test a few cells from each of your IVF embryos, run the DNA through an algorithm, and hand you a score. You pick the embryo with the best numbers. The doctor transfers it. Nine months later, you have a baby.

MIT Technology Review named this a breakthrough technology of 2026. Over 100 fertility clinics in the United States offer it right now. Silicon Valley billionaires are early adopters. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have backed companies selling the service. The word eugenics does not appear in any of the marketing materials. It doesn't need to.

Five Names in 143 Years: The Ideology Behind the Score

That score on the screen traces back to a paper published in February 2014 by two philosophers at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. The lead author's organization received $120,000 from Jeffrey Epstein. The first company to commercialize the idea was co-founded by a man who later resigned from his university after accusations of promoting scientific racism.

The belief behind that score was given a name in 1883. It was given a different name in 1960. A different name again in 2005. A different name in 2014 when it became a paper. A different name in 2019 when it became a product. Five names in 143 years. The core idea never moved an inch: some humans are worth more than others, and someone should be deciding who gets born.

Each time the name changed, an institution changed its sign on the door, a journal changed its cover. Each time it was defeated, it survived by stopping calling itself what it is. This time it doesn't need a government. It just needs a consumer.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Same Address, Different Century

In 1910, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island housed the headquarters of the American forced sterilization movement. The Eugenics Record Office opened there that year. Field workers fanned out across the country, visiting homes, schools, prisons, hospitals, and asylums, recording intelligence assessments and family histories going back generations. They built pedigree charts that classified Americans into categories of fitness. The data was used to determine who should reproduce and who should be sterilized.

By 1937, 32 states had passed forced sterilization laws. California alone sterilized roughly 20,000 people. In 1927, the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell provided the legal sanction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority opinion: 'Three generations of imbeciles are enough.' Sixty thousand Americans were sterilized. The last forced sterilization documented in a US state institution happened in 1981. That's the year Raiders of the Lost Ark came out. That is not ancient history.

In August 2026, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will host the CRISPR Frontiers conference, where the world's leading gene editing researchers will gather to discuss the future of human genetic modification. Nobody changed the address. They changed the name on the door.

23andMe Bankruptcy: When 15 Million Genomes Became a Liquidation Asset

At some point in the last decade, about 15 million people bought a kit, spit in a tube, mailed it off, and waited for an email. Almost nobody reads privacy policies. A study found the average American would need 76 working days per year to read every privacy policy they encounter. So they clicked agree and mailed their spit. The company was 23andMe, and in March 2025, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy.

When a furniture company goes bankrupt, the court sells the furniture. When a tech company goes bankrupt, the court sells the tech. But 23andMe wasn't sitting on servers for furniture catalogs. It was sitting on the complete genetic code of 15 million human beings, immutable data. You can change your password. You can change your address. You cannot change your genome. And your genome doesn't just describe you: it describes your parents, your siblings, your children, and every descendant you'll ever have.

The first winning bid came from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a New York biotech firm, for $256 million. More than two dozen state attorneys general immediately sued to stop the sale. HIPAA does not cover consumer genetic testing data. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects against discrimination by employers and health insurers, but has a blind spot: it doesn't cover life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance. Your genome went to bankruptcy court with fewer legal protections than your credit card number.

The auction was reopened. Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's co-founder and former CEO, created a nonprofit called TTAM Research Institute, the acronym standing for 23andMe. She won the bidding at $305 million. Bankruptcy judge Brian Walsh acknowledged that the deal involved the sale of customer data only in a technical sense. Five states still objected: California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah. The acquisition completed in July 2025. The legal precedent was set: in the United States, your DNA can pass through a bankruptcy proceeding as a transferable asset.

The 2023 Hack: Ethnically Targeted Genetic Data Sold Online

The bankruptcy wasn't the only thing that happened to 23andMe customers. Two years earlier, in 2023, hackers accessed 6.9 million accounts. A lawsuit filed in 2024 alleged that data belonging to Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish customers was specifically targeted and sold online in curated lists.

One plaintiff told reporters that as a member of the Jewish community, the idea of someone compiling lists of Jewish people by genealogy carried a weight that went beyond ordinary identity theft. That weight is not abstract. It's historical. Curated lists of Jewish people organized by hereditary information is something that has happened before. The fact that it happened again through a consumer product that millions of people used voluntarily, in a country with no federal genetic privacy law, is the kind of detail that connects 2023 to 1935 in ways nobody signing the spit kit intended.

The UK Information Commissioner's Office and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada imposed a 2.31 million pound fine on 23andMe in 2025 for the breach. The company settled a lawsuit for $30 million without admitting wrongdoing. A fine is a cost of doing business. It doesn't put the data back in the bottle.

Stolen Children's DNA: The NIH Data Misuse That AI Chatbots Laundered as Science

In 2015, the National Institutes of Health launched two of the most ambitious genetic studies ever attempted on children. The ABCD Study enrolled more than 11,000 children to track brain development over a decade: MRIs, clinical tests, DNA samples from blood and saliva. Separately, the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort collected similar data from about 9,500 children. Parents signed up because they were told the data would be closely guarded.

On January 24 of this year, the New York Times published an investigation by reporter Mike MacIntyre revealing what actually happened. Bryan J. Pesta, a researcher at Cleveland State University, obtained NIH access to the Philadelphia data, analyzed it on a computer in his home, then uploaded it without NIH approval to a foreign DNA lab to try to determine the skin color of children in the study. Pesta, along with a network of fringe researchers, used that data and the ABCD data to produce at least 16 papers. The papers ranked ethnicities by IQ scores. They argued that Black people earn less because they are less intelligent. They described their findings as support for a hereditarian model, the idea that differences in intelligence between racial groups are primarily genetic.

Mainstream geneticists rejected the work as biased and unscientific. But the papers were published. They entered the academic record. Then AI chatbots picked them up. The Times investigation found that Elon Musk's Grok chatbot referenced the research more than two dozen times in a single month, treating papers produced from stolen children's data as legitimate scientific findings and presenting them in response to ordinary questions about intelligence and race.

Terry Jernigan, the national co-director of the ABCD Study and a neuropsychologist at the University of California, San Diego, told reporters that what happened was evil. The parents? They were never told. The scientists leading the ABCD Study made a deliberate decision not to inform families that their children's genetic data had been weaponized for racial pseudoscience. The Petrie Flom Center at Harvard Law School published a response four days later: the existing system treats genetic data collection as minimal risk and does not adequately address what happens when data collected for one purpose is repurposed for something families never consented to. According to the Times's review of government records, NIH genomic repositories have been improperly released, misused, or exposed at least 63 times since 2007.

What the Science Actually Says: Separating the Claim From the Marketing

Before going further, I want to do something most documentaries in this space skip: tell you what's not true. You will encounter claims that CRISPR can create superhuman designer babies right now. That is false. A 2019 study in Cell, led by Shai Carmi of Hebrew University, used real family data to test whether polygenic scoring could actually predict which child would be tallest or smartest. In 28 large families with about 10 children each, the sibling with the top height score was actually the tallest in only seven of the 28 families. For cognitive ability, the numbers were similarly underwhelming. The predicted gain from selecting the top-scoring embryo from a typical IVF cycle of five is about 2.5 IQ points, within the range of what a good school or stable home environment might contribute.

Polygenic embryo selection doesn't edit anything. It picks. And it operates in a regulatory vacuum. A congressional appropriations rider has prohibited the FDA from reviewing germline editing clinical trials every year since 2015, but that rider does not cover embryo selection. No federal agency has claimed jurisdiction. The FDA has no authority over the scoring.

The claim that 23andMe's data was sold to the military or government is not supported by the evidence. The data was acquired by Wojcicki's nonprofit. Concerns about future use are legitimate. The specific claim of government acquisition is not verified. What is documented, what is verified, what is sourced to published papers, court filings, and mainstream journalism is disturbing enough without embellishment. Every claim in this dispatch is cited. The distinction between what's real and what's rumor is what separates investigation from paranoia.

The 2014 Oxford Paper: Bostrom, Shulman, and the Logic of Iterated Embryo Selection

In February 2014, two philosophers at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University published a paper in Global Policy Journal titled 'Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game Changer?' The authors were Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom. Bostrom's 2014 book Superintelligence was a New York Times bestseller that reportedly sat on Elon Musk's nightstand. Bill Gates recommended it. He founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford in 2005 and co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998.

The paper proposed that as genetic databases grew larger and prediction models improved, it would become possible to select IVF embryos based on polygenic scores for cognitive ability. Not by editing genes, by choosing between embryos. Pick the one with the highest predicted IQ, discard the rest. The paper acknowledged that first-generation effects would be modest, roughly 2.5 IQ points from a typical five-embryo cycle.

But the paper wasn't about the first generation. Bostrom and Shulman proposed something called iterated embryo selection: take the best embryo, derive stem cells from it, use those stem cells to create new gametes, fertilize, create a new batch, score them, select the best, repeat. Each cycle compresses a generational time span into a laboratory procedure. The paper projected that this process, applied across multiple compressed generations, could theoretically produce IQ gains of up to 130 points. For reference, the difference between an average IQ and genius level is about 30 points.

The key enabling technology is in vitro gametogenesis, IVG: creating functional eggs and sperm from stem cells. In 2023, Japanese researchers produced viable mouse offspring using IVG. The technology has not been demonstrated in humans. But it's funded. It's progressing. And Bostrom framed adoption of this technology in specific language: it is what 'responsible enlightened couples' might choose to do. Not government coercion. Consumer choice. Read that phrase again. It presumes that choosing to genetically optimize your children is what enlightened people do. It implies that choosing not to is, at some level, irresponsible.

Genomic Prediction and the First Commercial Embryo Scoring Market

The 2014 paper cited physicist Stephen Hsu, who had been working on computational genomics using machine learning to build predictors that could estimate traits from DNA alone. Five years after the paper was published, in 2019, Hsu co-founded Genomic Prediction, the first company to offer polygenic embryo screening to IVF clinics. The product was called LifeView. For about $2,000 per cycle, it scored each embryo across a range of health risks and cognitive-adjacent traits. The company now works with approximately 200 IVF clinics across six continents.

Hsu and co-founder Laurent Tellier both had involvement with a BGI project in China aimed at sequencing the genomes of mathematical geniuses, trying to identify the genetic basis of exceptional intelligence. That research fed directly into the models Genomic Prediction would later commercialize. Hsu said publicly the company wouldn't return IQ predictions because 'society is not ready for it.' But the infrastructure was built. The algorithm existed. The line between screening for intellectual disability and screening for high IQ was a software setting, not a scientific barrier.

In 2020, Hsu resigned as vice president for research at Michigan State. A petition signed by hundreds of faculty members and graduate students accused him of promoting scientific racism and making comments that normalized the idea of biological differences in intelligence between racial groups. Hsu has disputed the characterization. The resignation happened. By 2025, the market had grown: Orchid Health launched after a $5.4 million seed round. Nucleus Genomics entered the market advertising its service with the tagline 'have your best baby,' not the healthiest baby, the best baby. The Behavior Genetics Association issued a formal statement in June 2025 advising against clinical use. The companies ignored the advisory.

Epstein's Checkbook: The $120,000 That Connected the Philosophy to the Product

Nick Bostrom co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998, an organization dedicated to the proposition that humanity can and should use technology to enhance itself beyond its biological limits. The organization later rebranded as Humanity Plus. Jeffrey Epstein funded it: $120,000, including money that went directly to cover the salary of Ben Goertzel, who served as vice chairman. Goertzel, an AI researcher who spent decades working on artificial general intelligence, sent Epstein an email after his release from prison in 2009 that read 'Congratulations.' with four exclamation points.

Goertzel invited Epstein to a brainstorming workshop with 20 speakers from the Singularity Summit, an annual event co-founded by Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Peter Thiel that brought together transhumanists interested in building superintelligent AI. Epstein sent another $50,000 to the Singularity Institute. Goertzel wrote back: 'Many, many thanks. The AI we build will thank you one day.' In 2018, three years after Epstein's second arrest and federal indictment, Bostrom invited Epstein to a small invitation-only event. The relationship continued long after Epstein's crimes were public knowledge.

In December 2025, the Byline Times published an investigation based on emails Epstein's estate turned over to the House Oversight Committee. The emails revealed conversations between Epstein and AI theorist Yosha Bach, who was a research fellow at Humanity Plus during the Epstein funding period between 2013 and 2014, and then received another $300,000 from Epstein at Harvard and MIT's Media Lab. In one 2016 email, Bach discussed what he characterized as cognitive differences between racial groups, making claims about Black children's learning capabilities that mainstream neuroscience would reject as baseless. In other exchanges, Bach and Epstein discussed conditions under which mass human death could be considered acceptable as a climate optimization strategy. Not as moral horror. As math. As utility calculation.

The Closed Circle: Open Philanthropy, IVG Funding, and George Church

Carl Shulman, Bostrom's co-author on the embryo selection paper, is an advisor to Open Philanthropy, founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna. Open Philanthropy has directed grants to reproductive biotechnology research, including $6.5 million to a team that successfully performed in vitro gametogenesis in mice. That's the stem-cell-to-gamete technology Bostrom and Shulman specifically described as the mechanism that would amplify embryo selection from modest to dramatic. The same philanthropic network funds the philosophy, the science, and the companies. The circle is closed.

Jaan Tallinn, the co-founder of Skype and a major effective altruism funder, is a large investor in Conception, the company developing IVG for human use. Peter Thiel once gave the keynote address at an effective altruism conference. At its peak, the effective altruism movement claimed $46 billion in committed funding. FTX collapsed. Open Philanthropy continued.

Then there's George Church. Church is a Harvard geneticist who has co-founded roughly 50 biotech companies through his Harvard lab. In 2018 alone, his lab spun off 16 startups in a single year. His CRISPR research is foundational to the gene editing field. Church received direct funding from Jeffrey Epstein, which he has acknowledged publicly. He sits on the advisory board of BGI Group, China's largest genomics company, which established a dedicated research collaboration named after him: the George Church Institute of Regenesis. In 2025, Church joined Lila Sciences as chief scientist.

Oxford Closes the Future of Humanity Institute: The Papers Survive

Oxford University closed the Future of Humanity Institute in 2024. Bostrom's academic base, the institution that incubated longtermism and produced the embryo selection paper, shut its doors after Bostrom's racist emails from the 1990s resurfaced publicly. In those emails posted to an Extropian listserv, Bostrom had written that 'blacks are more stupid than whites' and added, 'I like that sentence and think it is true.' He also used a racial slur.

His 2023 apology was widely criticized as insufficient, in part because it did not repudiate the underlying claim about racial differences in intelligence. The institute closed. But the papers it produced are still being cited. The companies they inspired are still operating. The philosophical framework it built is embedded in the organizations and funding networks that continue to direct billions of dollars toward the technologies examined here.

Longtermism's published logic holds that we should prioritize the long-term future of humanity over present-day suffering. Follow it to its published conclusion: a child suffering right now matters less than engineering the right kind of human for 10,000 years from now. Philosopher Emil Torres described longtermism in Aeon as an ideology that justifies enormous expenditures on speculative technologies while sidelining concerns about present-day injustices. Bostrom has also listed what he calls 'dysgenic pressures' as an existential risk: his concern that people with less intellectual talent are reproducing at higher rates than people with more. The worry, stated plainly, is that the wrong people are having too many children.

You Are Already Inside This System: Newborn Screening, DNA Databases, and the Inherited Exposure

If you've taken a DNA test with 23andMe, AncestryDNA, or MyHeritage, your genome is in a database. The terms of service you clicked through may or may not allow the data to be used for research. The company holding it may or may not exist in five years. And if it goes bankrupt, as we've just seen, your DNA becomes a line item in a liquidation filing.

If your child was born in any US state in the last three decades, mandatory newborn screening collected genetic material: a small blood sample from the heel taken within days of birth, standard in all 50 states. That data goes into a state database. Retention policies vary wildly. Texas retained newborn blood spots for years and gave samples to the Department of Defense for a forensic database, which only came to light through a lawsuit. Minnesota retained samples indefinitely until parents sued. Most parents don't know. Most hospitals don't volunteer the information. Your child's genetic identity entered a government database before they left the hospital.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects against genetic discrimination by employers and health insurers. It does not cover life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance. The gaps in the law are where the risk lives. And even if you've never participated directly: if your sibling took a DNA test, a significant portion of your genome is now in that database by inference. You don't have to participate directly. The network effect of genetic data means other people's choices create your exposure.

A 2028 Scenario Built From Technologies That Already Exist

Every element of the following is based on technology and policy that either currently exists or is in active development. Your child is born in 2028. Within 48 hours, a nurse takes a blood sample from their heel, standard newborn screening mandated in all 50 states. The genetic data enters a state database. Your child starts school. A cognitive assessment tool, versions of which are already being piloted in school districts, profiles their learning pattern. Today, those two systems don't talk to each other. A policy change or a data breach could connect them.

Meanwhile, the family down the street did IVF. They also paid for polygenic embryo scoring through a company like Genomic Prediction. They selected the embryo with the highest cognitive index. Their child sits in the same classroom. The predicted IQ gain from embryo selection, based on current science, is about 2.5 points. That's within the margin of a good night's sleep. But the informational gap is massive: one family had access to a selection framework, the other didn't. One family made a choice within a system they didn't fully understand. The other never knew the choice existed. Neither was told whose intellectual tradition built the framework.

Now extend the timeline. When IVG works in humans, backed by Jaan Tallinn's investment in Conception and Open Philanthropy's $6.5 million in IVG mouse research, the selection pool explodes from five or ten embryos to hundreds. A 2.5 point advantage from picking one of five becomes something much larger when you're picking one of 500. At some point, choosing not to select becomes the unusual decision, the thing that marks your child as unoptimized. Insurance companies will notice. Employers will notice. Not because anyone passes a law requiring selection, but because when technology is available and affordable, opting out becomes a signal.

Who Designed the Spreadsheet: The Disclosure That Never Happens

The paper became a product. The product is in clinics. At no point in this chain does anyone in the fertility clinic tell the parents where the framework came from. The marketing materials describe the technology as medical innovation. The informed consent form covers the medical procedure. It does not cover the intellectual history of the scoring algorithm, who funded it, or what its architects believe about which humans should exist.

Jeffrey Epstein told scientists he wanted to seed the human race with his DNA. He discussed using his 33,000 square foot New Mexico ranch as a breeding facility, 20 women pregnant at a time. This was reported by the New York Times in 2019, sourced to scientists who attended his events and heard him say it. It wasn't a joke. He had consulted experts about logistics. In the context of everything traced here, Epstein wasn't dreaming something new. He was stating crudely and criminally the logical end point of a framework that his money helped build: someone decides which humans are worth creating, and the mechanism for doing it already exists.

There is no federal law governing polygenic embryo selection in the United States. The Behavior Genetics Association formally advised against it in 2025. The companies are doing it anyway. A Princeton University Press book titled What We Inherit called it in desperate need of regulation. The regulatory vacuum remains. The question this investigation leaves you with is not whether you should make the choice. That's yours. The question is whether you are ever given enough information to make it freely.

// REFERENCED ENTITIES

  • Nick Bostrom
    Person
    I traced how Bostrom co-authored the 2014 Oxford paper proposing embryo selection for cognitive enhancement, co-founded the World Transhumanist Association that received Epstein's $120,000, and whose 1996 emails declaring 'blacks are more stupid than whites' resurfaced and led to the closure of his Future of Humanity Institute in 2024.
  • Carl Shulman
    Person
    I identified Shulman as Bostrom's co-author on the 2014 embryo selection paper and as an advisor to Open Philanthropy, connecting the academic theory directly to the philanthropic infrastructure funding both longtermist philosophy and reproductive biotech research.
  • Stephen Hsu
    Person
    I followed Hsu from his citation in the 2014 Bostrom-Shulman paper, through his computational genomics work and BGI collaboration, to his co-founding of Genomic Prediction in 2019, the first commercial embryo scoring company; he resigned as vice president for research at Michigan State in 2020 amid accusations of promoting scientific racism.
  • Jeffrey Epstein
    Person
    I documented Epstein's $120,000 donation to Bostrom's World Transhumanist Association, his sustained attendance at Edge Foundation dinners alongside Google and Amazon founders, his post-prison relationship with Ben Goertzel and the Singularity Institute, and his reported desire to use his New Mexico ranch as a breeding facility to seed the human race with his DNA.
  • George Church
    Person
    I identified Church as a Harvard geneticist who received direct Epstein funding, sits on BGI Group's advisory board, has a dedicated BGI research collaboration named after him, and joined Lila Sciences as chief scientist in 2025.
  • Ben Goertzel
    Person
    I traced Goertzel's role as vice chairman of Humanity Plus, his salary funded by Epstein's $120,000 donation, his congratulatory email to Epstein on his prison release, and his invitations to Epstein to fund Singularity Summit events.
  • Anne Wojcicki
    Person
    I covered Wojcicki's resignation as 23andMe CEO when the bankruptcy was filed, her creation of the TTAM Research Institute nonprofit, and her winning bid of $305 million that kept the genetic data of 15 million customers under her control.
  • Bryan J. Pesta
    Person
    I reported on Pesta, a Cleveland State University researcher who obtained NIH access to the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort data, analyzed it on a home computer, uploaded it to a foreign DNA lab without NIH approval, and co-produced at least 16 papers ranking ethnicities by IQ using stolen children's genetic data.
  • Laurent Tellier
    Person
    I identified Tellier as Hsu's co-founder at Genomic Prediction and noted his involvement in the BGI project to sequence the genomes of mathematical geniuses.
  • Yosha Bach
    Person
    I reported on Bach as an AI theorist who was a research fellow at Humanity Plus during Epstein's funding period, received a further $300,000 from Epstein at Harvard and MIT's Media Lab, and whose emails to Epstein discussed racial cognitive differences and conditions under which mass human death could be considered acceptable as a climate optimization strategy.
  • Jaan Tallinn
    Person
    I identified Tallinn, Skype's co-founder and effective altruism funder, as a major investor in Conception, the company developing in vitro gametogenesis for human use, the same technology Bostrom's 2014 paper described as the mechanism that would amplify embryo selection from modest to species-altering.
  • Dustin Moskovitz
    Person
    I traced Moskovitz as Facebook co-founder and co-founder of Open Philanthropy, the organization that funds longtermist philosophy at Oxford and directed $6.5 million to IVG research in mice.
  • Cari Tuna
    Person
    I identified Tuna as Moskovitz's partner and co-founder of Open Philanthropy, whose funding pipeline connects the academic theory of embryo selection to its commercial and scientific development.
  • Terry Jernigan
    Person
    I quoted Jernigan, national co-director of the ABCD study and neuropsychologist at UC San Diego, who told reporters that what Pesta's network did with the children's data was evil and that the science was being used to advance an unethical agenda.
  • Angela Laird
    Person
    I reported on Laird at Florida International University, who helps run the ABCD study in South Florida and told the Times that many of her participants are Black and Hispanic and are the direct targets of the racist studies produced from their data.
  • Shai Carmi
    Person
    I cited Carmi's 2019 analysis from Hebrew University, which used real family data to show that the top-scoring embryo was actually the tallest in only 7 of 28 families, and that predicted cognitive gains from current embryo selection are approximately 2.5 IQ points.
  • Harry Sharp
    Person
    I traced Sharp as the physician who authored Indiana's 1907 forced sterilization law, the first in the nation, while performing sterilizations on inmates at the Indiana Reformatory and describing it as a medical intervention in the public interest.
  • Francis Galton
    Person
    I identified Galton as the originating node in the 143-year lineage, coining the word eugenics in 1883 and defining it as the science of improving the human stock.
  • Julian Huxley
    Person
    I documented Huxley, president of the British Eugenics Society, as coining the word transhumanism in 1958, the second name change in the ideology's five-name 143-year trajectory.
  • Emil Torres
    Person
    I cited Torres's description in Aeon of longtermism as an ideology that justifies enormous expenditures on speculative technologies while sidelining concerns about present-day injustices.
  • Sam Bankman-Fried
    Person
    I noted Bankman-Fried as the most visible example of effective altruism funding before the FTX collapse, with the broader network at peak claiming $46 billion in committed funding.
  • Avril Haines
    Person
    I noted Haines, Biden's Director of National Intelligence, previously consulted with Open Philanthropy, demonstrating the longtermist network's proximity to the highest levels of government.
  • Jason Matheny
    Person
    I identified Matheny, Biden's Deputy Assistant for Technology and National Security, as a former research assistant at Bostrom's Future of Humanity Institute.
  • Ray Kurzweil
    Person
    I identified Kurzweil as a transhumanist futurist who co-founded the Singularity Summit alongside Eliezer Yudkowsky and Peter Thiel, and later became director of engineering at Google in 2012.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky
    Person
    I named Yudkowsky as a co-founder of the Singularity Summit, an annual transhumanist event that Goertzel invited Epstein to fund.
  • Peter Thiel
    Person
    I identified Thiel as a Singularity Summit co-founder, once keynote speaker at an effective altruism conference, and a backer of companies selling embryo scoring services.
  • Elon Musk
    Person
    I noted Musk as an early adopter backer of embryo scoring companies, the owner of Grok chatbot which referenced Pesta's stolen-data race science papers more than two dozen times in a single month, and as someone whose nightstand reportedly held Bostrom's book Superintelligence.
  • Brian Walsh
    Person
    I identified Walsh as the bankruptcy judge who ruled in the 23andMe case, acknowledging in his ruling that the deal involved the sale of customer data only in a technical sense because the buyer was the same person who built the company.
  • Mike MacIntyre
    Person
    I cited MacIntyre's January 24, 2026 New York Times investigation as the publication that revealed how fringe researchers obtained and weaponized the NIH children's genetic data studies.
  • John Brockman
    Person
    I identified Brockman as the literary agent who ran the Edge Foundation dinners where Amazon, Google, and other tech founders sat alongside Epstein after his first conviction.
  • Sergey Brin
    Person
    I listed Brin as a Google co-founder who attended Edge Foundation dinners where Epstein was also a guest.
  • Larry Page
    Person
    I listed Page as a Google co-founder who attended Edge Foundation dinners where Epstein was also a guest.
  • Jeff Bezos
    Person
    I listed Bezos as Amazon founder who attended Edge Foundation dinners where Epstein was also a guest.
  • Dean Kamen
    Person
    I listed Kamen, inventor of the Segway, as an attendee at Edge Foundation dinners alongside Epstein.
  • Vinod Khosla
    Person
    I listed Khosla, Sun Microsystems founder, as an attendee at Edge Foundation dinners alongside Epstein.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes
    Person
    I quoted Holmes's 1927 Supreme Court majority opinion in Buck v. Bell, 'Three generations of imbeciles are enough,' which provided legal cover for 60,000 forced sterilizations.
  • 23andMe
    Organization
    I traced 23andMe's March 2025 bankruptcy filing, the liquidation auction of 15 million customers' genetic data, the 2023 hack of 6.9 million accounts with ethnically targeted data sold online, and the $30 million settlement with regulators.
  • Genomic Prediction
    Organization
    I identified Genomic Prediction as the first company to commercialize polygenic embryo scoring, co-founded by Hsu in 2019, now operating with approximately 200 IVF clinics across six continents under the LifeView product name.
  • Future of Humanity Institute
    Organization
    I traced the FHI as the Oxford institution Bostrom founded in 2005, which produced the 2014 embryo selection paper, received effective altruism funding through Open Philanthropy networks, and was closed by Oxford in 2024 after Bostrom's racist emails resurfaced.
  • World Transhumanist Association
    Organization
    I documented the World Transhumanist Association, co-founded by Bostrom in 1998, as the organization that received Epstein's $120,000 including salary funding for Ben Goertzel, later rebranded as Humanity Plus.
  • Humanity Plus
    Organization
    I identified Humanity Plus as the rebrand of the World Transhumanist Association, the organization that received Epstein's $120,000 and where Yosha Bach served as a research fellow during the funding period.
  • Open Philanthropy
    Organization
    I traced Open Philanthropy, founded by Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, as the philanthropic hub funding longtermist philosophy at Oxford and directing $6.5 million to IVG research in mice, advised by Bostrom's co-author Carl Shulman.
  • Orchid Health
    Organization
    I noted Orchid Health as a polygenic embryo scoring company that launched after a $5.4 million seed round, expanding the commercial market beyond Genomic Prediction.
  • Nucleus Genomics
    Organization
    I identified Nucleus Genomics as a polygenic embryo scoring company advertising its service with the tagline 'have your best baby,' an optimization pitch rather than a disease-risk message.
  • Conception
    Organization
    I identified Conception as the company developing in vitro gametogenesis for human use, backed by Jaan Tallinn and funded through Open Philanthropy's IVG research grants.
  • BGI Group
    Organization
    I traced BGI as China's largest genomics company, where George Church sits on the advisory board and which ran a project to sequence the genomes of mathematical geniuses that fed into Genomic Prediction's commercial models; BGI established the George Church Institute of Regenesis as a named research collaboration.
  • Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
    Organization
    I noted Regeneron as the New York biotech firm whose winning $256 million bid for 23andMe's genetic data was challenged by more than two dozen state attorneys general.
  • TTAM Research Institute
    Organization
    I identified TTAM Research Institute as the nonprofit Anne Wojcicki created to re-acquire 23andMe's data, winning the reopened auction with a $305 million bid; TTAM is an acronym for 23andMe.
  • Eugenics Record Office
    Organization
    I traced the Eugenics Record Office, opened at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1910, as the institutional headquarters of the American forced sterilization movement that collected pedigree data used to determine who should be sterilized.
  • Edge Foundation
    Organization
    I identified the Edge Foundation, run by John Brockman, as the intellectual dinner circuit where tech founders including Bezos, Brin, Page, and Khosla sat alongside Epstein after his first conviction.
  • Singularity Summit
    Event
    I traced the Singularity Summit, co-founded by Kurzweil, Yudkowsky, and Thiel, as the annual transhumanist AI event Goertzel invited Epstein to fund, resulting in a $50,000 donation to the Singularity Institute.
  • Effective Altruism
    Organization
    I traced effective altruism as the broader movement channeling billions through organizations connected to the longtermist network, with Open Philanthropy continuing to fund both philosophical and scientific work after FTX's collapse.
  • National Institutes of Health
    Organization
    I reported on NIH's role running the ABCD study and the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, whose access control system was circumvented by Pesta's network, and noted that NIH genomic repositories have been improperly released, misused, or exposed at least 63 times since 2007.
  • Public Citizen
    Organization
    I cited Public Citizen's November 2025 congressional testimony arguing that the existing legal framework treats DNA as ordinary data despite its permanent, heritable, and shared nature.
  • Behavior Genetics Association
    Organization
    I noted that the Behavior Genetics Association issued a formal statement in June 2025 advising against clinical use of polygenic embryo selection, which the companies ignored.
  • Petrie Flom Center
    Organization
    I cited the Petrie Flom Center at Harvard Law School's assessment, published four days after the Times investigation, that the existing system treats genetic data collection as minimal risk and does not adequately address data repurposed without families' consent.
  • Lila Sciences
    Organization
    I noted that George Church joined Lila Sciences as chief scientist in 2025.
  • Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
    Place
    I used Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a through-line: it housed the Eugenics Record Office headquarters in 1910 and will host the CRISPR Frontiers conference in August 2026. Nobody changed the address.
  • Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford
    Place
    I traced the FHI as the Oxford institution that incubated longtermism, produced the 2014 embryo selection paper, and was closed by the university in 2024 after Bostrom's racist 1990s emails resurfaced.
  • Buck v. Bell
    Document
    I cited the 1927 Supreme Court case as the legal foundation for 60,000 forced sterilizations, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writing the majority opinion.
  • Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement: Curiosity or Game Changer?
    Document
    I identified this February 2014 paper by Bostrom and Shulman in Global Policy Journal as the intellectual origin of commercial embryo scoring, tracing the line from its publication to the products now operating in over 100 US fertility clinics.
  • Superintelligence
    Document
    I noted Bostrom's 2014 New York Times bestselling book as one that reportedly sat on Elon Musk's nightstand and was recommended by Bill Gates, illustrating Bostrom's reach into the technology elite.
  • What We Inherit
    Document
    I cited this February 2026 Princeton University Press book as describing polygenic embryo selection as in desperate need of regulation.
  • ABCD Study
    Event
    I reported on the NIH's Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, which enrolled more than 11,000 children, as one of two datasets whose genetic data was obtained and weaponized by Pesta's network for race-ranking papers.
  • Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort
    Event
    I reported on the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort's data of approximately 9,500 children as the second dataset Pesta analyzed on a home computer and uploaded to a foreign DNA lab to determine children's skin color without NIH approval.
  • CRISPR Frontiers Conference
    Event
    I noted the CRISPR Frontiers conference scheduled for August 2026 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where the world's leading gene editing researchers will gather at the same address that housed the 1910 forced sterilization headquarters.
  • Byline Times
    Organization
    I cited Byline Times's December 2025 investigation based on Epstein estate emails turned over to the House Oversight Committee, which revealed Bach and Epstein's exchanges about racial cognitive differences and mass human death as a climate optimization calculation.
  • Villanova University
    Organization
    I cited a Villanova University team's December 2025 paper in Nature Genetics identifying the 23andMe collapse as an inflection point for the entire direct-to-consumer genetics market.
  • Harvard Health and Human Rights Journal
    Document
    I cited the Harvard Health and Human Rights Journal's June 2025 analysis concluding that bankruptcy law converts consent-bound records into liquidable assets.
  • Indiana Reformatory
    Place
    I identified the Indiana Reformatory as the institution where Harry Sharp performed sterilizations on inmates before authoring the first forced sterilization law in 1907.
  • Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act
    Document
    I identified GINA as a law with a blind spot covering employer and health insurer discrimination but not life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance.
  • Cleveland State University
    Organization
    I identified Cleveland State University as the institution where Bryan Pesta held a position and from which investigators interviewed him about his unauthorized use of NIH children's genetic data.
  • Florida International University
    Organization
    I cited Florida International University as the institution where Angela Laird helps run the ABCD study in South Florida.
  • Michigan State University
    Organization
    I noted that Stephen Hsu resigned as vice president for research at Michigan State in 2020 following a petition signed by hundreds of faculty members and graduate students accusing him of promoting scientific racism.
  • MIT Technology Review
    Organization
    I cited MIT Technology Review naming polygenic embryo scoring a breakthrough technology of 2026 and confirming in January 2026 that the practice has grown popular in Silicon Valley.
  • New England Journal of Medicine
    Organization
    I cited the New England Journal of Medicine's 2021 paper warning about the risks of polygenic embryo selection, flagging unintended consequences including demographic alteration and deepened inequality.

// SOURCES & RECEIPTS

Primary sources referenced in the broadcast description. External links open in a new tab.

  1. [01]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cn4PdhIoX4Fph6aoZFAyzYfNRTUdIaSY/view?usp=sharing

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// FAQ

What is polygenic embryo scoring and how does it work?
Polygenic embryo scoring tests DNA from cells taken off IVF embryos, runs that genetic data through an algorithm, and produces a score predicting traits including disease risk and, in some markets, cognitive ability. Companies like Genomic Prediction charge approximately $2,000 per IVF cycle. A 2019 study led by Shai Carmi found the predicted cognitive gain from selecting the top-scoring embryo out of a typical five is about 2.5 IQ points, which is within the range of environmental factors like a good school.
Who is Nick Bostrom and what is his connection to embryo selection?
Nick Bostrom is the philosopher who founded Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute in 2005 and co-founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998. In February 2014, he and Carl Shulman published a paper in Global Policy Journal proposing embryo selection for cognitive enhancement, including a process called iterated embryo selection that the paper projected could theoretically produce IQ gains of up to 130 points. His organization received $120,000 from Jeffrey Epstein, and Oxford closed the Future of Humanity Institute in 2024 after his 1990s racist emails resurfaced.
What happened to 23andMe's genetic data when it went bankrupt?
23andMe filed for bankruptcy in March 2025, and the genetic data of 15 million customers was treated as a corporate asset subject to liquidation. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals initially won the auction with a $256 million bid before more than two dozen state attorneys general sued to block the sale. The auction was reopened, and TTAM Research Institute, a nonprofit created by 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, won with a $305 million bid. The acquisition completed in July 2025, establishing a legal precedent that DNA can pass through US bankruptcy proceedings as a transferable asset.
How was children's DNA from NIH studies misused for race science?
Bryan J. Pesta, a researcher at Cleveland State University, obtained NIH access to the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort data on approximately 9,500 children, then analyzed it at home and uploaded it to a foreign DNA lab without NIH approval to try to determine children's skin color. Pesta's network also accessed ABCD Study data on over 11,000 children. Together they produced at least 16 papers ranking ethnicities by IQ. A New York Times investigation published January 24 of this year found that Elon Musk's Grok chatbot referenced this research more than two dozen times in a single month. Families were never informed.
What is the connection between Jeffrey Epstein and the transhumanist movement?
Epstein donated $120,000 to the World Transhumanist Association, co-founded by Nick Bostrom, including salary funding for vice chairman Ben Goertzel. Goertzel sent Epstein a congratulatory email on his prison release in 2009 and invited him to fund the Singularity Summit; Epstein donated a further $50,000 to the Singularity Institute. Bostrom invited Epstein to an invitation-only event in 2018, three years after Epstein's second arrest. George Church, whose CRISPR research is foundational to the gene editing field, also received direct Epstein funding, which he has publicly acknowledged.
Is polygenic embryo selection regulated in the United States?
No. A congressional appropriations rider has prohibited the FDA from reviewing germline editing clinical trials every year since 2015, but that rider covers germline editing, actually altering an embryo's DNA, and does not cover polygenic embryo selection, which picks between existing embryos without editing anything. No federal agency has claimed jurisdiction over the scoring. The Behavior Genetics Association issued a formal statement in June 2025 advising against clinical use, citing science not ready for commercial deployment. The companies ignored the advisory.
What is in vitro gametogenesis and why does it matter for embryo selection?
In vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, is the ability to create functional eggs and sperm from stem cells. Japanese researchers produced viable mouse offspring using IVG in 2023. The technology has not been demonstrated in humans. Bostrom and Shulman's 2014 paper specifically identified IVG as the breakthrough that would convert embryo selection from a modest intervention producing roughly 2.5 IQ points into a potentially species-altering one by expanding selection pools from five or ten embryos to hundreds. Open Philanthropy has directed $6.5 million to IVG research in mice, and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn is a major investor in Conception, the company developing IVG for human use.
What does longtermism argue and how does it connect to embryo scoring?
Longtermism, a philosophical framework developed in significant part by Nick Bostrom at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, holds that the long-term future of humanity should be prioritized over present-day suffering. Philosopher Emil Torres described it in Aeon as an ideology justifying enormous expenditures on speculative technologies while sidelining present-day injustices. Bostrom has listed 'dysgenic pressures' as an existential risk, expressing concern that people with less intellectual talent reproduce at higher rates. His 2014 embryo selection paper describes selection as what 'responsible enlightened couples' would choose, framing the eugenic outcome as consumer choice rather than state coercion.
Enriched 2026-06-01  //  @IAmNexor