Wealthy British couples are paying tens of thousands of dollars to overseas firms to rank their IVF embryos for predicted intelligence, height, and disease risk, utilizing a legal gap that UK regulators cannot yet close. The practice, led by US company Herasight and costing around $50,000 per couple, remains out of reach for most families and raises questions about inequality, scientific validity, and the future of reproductive choice.
Regulation Built To Prevent Disease, Not Enhance Traits
For more than three decades, UK law has allowed clinics to test embryos for a limited range of serious genetic disorders such as Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and sickle cell disease. The underlying principle is narrow: embryo testing should prevent suffering, not improve non-medical traits.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the independent regulator, enforces this rule. It explicitly bans the use of polygenic risk scores for embryo selection—techniques that estimate the likelihood of complex traits like intelligence or height based on many genetic variants. Regulators argue these scores are scientifically uncertain, depend heavily on ancestry and environment, and risk reviving eugenic ideas by ranking embryos for supposed superiority.
Within the UK, fertility clinics are barred from using such tools or choosing embryos on the basis of predicted IQ or stature. Yet this framework applies only to procedures carried out domestically, not to how patients use their data beyond national borders.
How Data Rights Open A Backdoor
At the heart of the loophole is data protection law rather than fertility regulation. Under UK and European rules, including the UK GDPR, individuals have broad rights to obtain their personal data—genetic information included. When embryos are created through IVF, the genetic profiles generated in UK clinics count as personal data belonging to the parents.
That means patients can lawfully demand the raw embryo genetic files from their clinic. Once those files are in their hands, existing UK fertility rules no longer apply: couples are free to send the data anywhere in the world. Herasight has confirmed it receives such embryo datasets from UK clients via this route.
The HFEA can prevent clinics from performing polygenic screening and may sanction those that use overseas risk scores to decide which embryo to transfer. It cannot, however, stop couples from exercising data rights or contracting foreign companies to interpret that information. The result is an escape hatch between domestic medical regulation and international data flows.
Inside Herasight’s Global Offering
Herasight, operating in the United States where embryo testing faces few legal limits, invites clients to submit genetic data from multiple embryos. In return, it provides predictions for a range of complex outcomes: estimated IQ, projected adult height, and relative risk for a variety of diseases.
The company charges around $50,000 per couple for access, with no cap on the number of embryos assessed. It promotes an especially striking claim: that choosing among five embryos using its algorithm could raise a future child’s IQ by an average of six points, which would be the largest documented effect for embryo selection if confirmed. That assertion, however, is not backed by peer-reviewed evidence.
Despite scientific skepticism, Herasight markets to affluent clients overseas, including in the UK, where such screening is prohibited in clinics. For now, only wealthier couples can contemplate paying more than the median British household’s annual income for an extra layer of embryo evaluation.
A London Clinic Sounds The Alarm
The scale of this emerging practice surfaced when a London fertility clinic reported it to regulators. At Avenues Fertility Clinic, a 29-year-old patient created and banked 16 embryos specifically to forward their genetic data to Herasight. Her goal was to select embryos showing the highest predicted IQ and lowest disease risk, within the bounds of what UK clinics are permitted to do on-site.
The clinic’s founder, senior embryologist Dr. Cristina Hickman, discovered that at least two patients were following this path. She notified the HFEA, warning that this pattern could open “a whole can of worms” by creating a two-tier system in which only high-income families can afford non-medical embryo selection while others rely on standard care.
Hickman did not accuse patients of breaking the law; in fact, their steps appear lawful. Her concern centred on the implications of a regulatory gap that allows a de facto market in genetic enhancement, even as domestic rules reject that goal.
Uncertain Science, Growing Market
Leading professional bodies highlight the scientific and ethical problems with polygenic embryo screening. The European Society of Human Genetics has condemned such use as unproven and unethical, noting that:
- Polygenic scores are calibrated primarily on certain populations and lose accuracy in others.
- Environmental factors such as upbringing, education, nutrition, and social context strongly influence traits like intelligence and height, limiting what genetics alone can predict.
- Using these scores to rank embryos shifts reproductive medicine from preventing serious disease to attempting enhancement.
Herasight’s claimed IQ advantage has not been validated in independent journals. Couples therefore commit substantial sums of money on the basis of company assurances rather than widely accepted research.
Even so, the potential finances are large. The UK performs around 77,500 IVF cycles each year. If only 5 percent of those cycles involved Herasight’s service, revenue could approach $193 million annually in the UK, with worldwide demand potentially reaching into the billions. As more couples participate, pressure will increase on regulators to respond.
Clinics, Lawmakers, And A Narrow Window For Change
UK clinics now occupy a difficult space. Data law obliges them to provide patients with genetic information on request. At the same time, the HFEA expects clinics not to select embryos using results from banned polygenic tests or to be seen as facilitating such use.
Some clinics have begun documenting discussions about why patients want their data, both to respect legal rights and to show they did not encourage overseas screening. Others rely on counseling to explain scientific limits and the HFEA’s stance in the hope of discouraging enhancement-focused choices.
Internationally, countries including Australia, Canada, and several European states maintain similar bans on polygenic embryo selection but have not fully addressed the same data route. In contrast, the United States currently places few restrictions on companies like Herasight, creating fertile ground for what amounts to global regulatory arbitrage.
In the UK, the HFEA has held meetings specifically about this loophole and is expected to draft formal guidance linking data protection and embryo testing rules. Lawmakers are debating whether existing legislation still fits an era of algorithmic risk scores and cross-border genomics. Policymakers could tighten the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, accept that such screening will occur and focus on transparency, or leave the situation largely unchanged.
What happens next will shape not only access to polygenic screening but also the direction of reproductive genetics more broadly. As more couples learn these services exist, and as the industry expands, the UK must decide whether to curb the practice before it becomes routine—or adapt its rules to a world in which data and embryos are no longer confined by national borders.