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These companies help parents try to pick their babies' traits. Experts are wary

Plus, the war in Iran’s impact on a family of a deployed American soldier.

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May 17, 2026 6:32am EDT

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by Brittney Melton

May 17, 2026

Good morning. This week, a jury ordered Boeing to pay $49.5 million to the family of a 737 MAX jet crash victim, researchers unearthed a new species of dinosaur that’s the largest in Southeast Asia, and the World Cup announced Shakira, Madonna and BTS will headline its final halftime show.

A slippery slope to designer babies

by Rob Stein, NPR's science desk correspondent and senior editor

I remember watching the film Gattaca back in 1997. It was a hot sci-fi thriller with a star-studded cast that included Jude Law, Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.

Gattaca envisioned a dystopian future where children are genetically selected to be endowed with what are considered the most desirable traits, creating a society of supposedly genetically superior and inferior people.

At the time, it seemed like a futuristic fantasy. In the real world, testing the genes of human embryos before trying to use them to make babies was just getting started, and was limited to detecting severe genetic disorders.

Fast-forward to today. A handful of start-ups are now offering anyone the chance to analyze every letter in the genetic code of their embryos to try – like high-tech fortune tellers – to peer into the genetic futures of their offspring.

A man in a purple lab coat walks by a door with “notice” signs on it that the area is for authorized personnel only and no food permitted in the lab.

Kate Medley for NPR

This new trend is generating both excitement and criticism. The companies say they’re helping prospective parents have the healthiest and happiest children possible. Critics say this kind of genetic analysis is still too unreliable — and that offering this gene testing could be a slippery slope to designer babies and a new form of modern-day eugenics.

Since I’ve long covered genetics, I decided to take a closer look at what these companies are doing exactly. I headed to North Carolina to visit Herasight, Inc., just outside Raleigh. Justin Schleede, a geneticist who runs Herasight’s lab, gave me a tour to explain how it works. I watched company scientists wearing blue gowns who extract DNA from blood and saliva samples from couples who want to have babies. The scientists also extracted genes from a few cells plucked from embryos they’ve created at IVF clinics. This includes embryos created by people experiencing infertility and those who go through IVF specifically so their embryos can get this in-depth genetic screening.

Technicians then make millions of copies of the DNA so all three billion letters in the genetic code of each embryo can be sequenced and then analyzed to produce “polygenic risk scores,” which estimate every embryo’s risk for thousands of diseases. The scores include rare genetic disorders like Tay Sachs and cystic fibrosis that doctors have long tested embryos for, but also much more common, much more complicated diseases, like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. But Herasight also does the gene analysis to estimate longevity, BMI, height and even IQ.

I spoke to executives at two other companies, including Orchid Health in California, which only estimates disease risks, and Nucleus Genomics in New York, which gives estimates for even more than disease risks, height, IQ and longevity. Nucleus also provides estimates for traits like eye color, hair color, whether the baby will be left-handed, is likely to develop acne or go bald, among other things.

Officials at all three companies say their estimates have been carefully validated for their accuracy. And they dispute what they’re doing is morally or ethically questionable. In fact, they argue their services are helping provide the best that medical science offers today. The companies say they’ve screened thousands of embryos for hundreds of clients, and helped create dozens – possibly hundreds – of genetically screened babies.

But I also talked with several critics, including bioethicists and representatives from groups like the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the American Association of Reproductive Medicine. They argue the companies are misleading customers about the usefulness of the polygenic risk screening, which can cost as much as $50,000. Some also note that this kind of service is eerily similar to the dark scenario depicted in Gattaca.

I also spoke to several customers from Nucleus and Herasight. All were primarily interested in trying to reduce the risk of having babies who would go on to develop diseases, such as diabetes or Alzheimer’s. Several were, however, also intrigued by what they’d learn about traits like IQ.

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Pod Club

Adult salmon leaping up a waterfall at Shin Falls, Sutherland, Scotland.

Catherine Braid/Getty Images

Thanks for tuning in last week to a special Mother's Day episode of StoryCorps. Many NPR listeners wrote in to let us know what they appreciated about their mom or mother figure. “I appreciate my mother for always telling me the truth,” Vicky Harrington said. “As long as I can remember she always has, without sugar coating the realities or consequences, been honest when answering any questions from myself. That's hard to find today.”

Today, listen to an episode of Short Wave and learn why these researchers gave salmon cocaine … for science. Scientists know that human drugs pollute aquatic environments, and some can even change how fish act. Jack Brand, an aquatic ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, decided to investigate how illicit drugs alter fish behavior, including foraging and mating. This episode explores the effects of getting salmon high for research and why Brand hopes it will change how people treat water for the better. Listen to the episode, or read the transcript.

After listening, is there anything that sticks out to you about the unique research Brand did? If so, let us know what by clicking here. Your response could appear in next week's Sunday newsletter.

Love podcasts? For handpicked episode recommendations every week, check out Pod Club — a newsletter written FOR podcast fans BY podcast fans. Subscribe here!

And, on this week's episode of The Sunday Story from Up First, NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu examines how the Nigerian government is violently seizing land from poor residents in Lagos to build luxury condos. He discusses the human cost of transforming the area into the "Dubai of Africa."

Between the lines

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It's time for the Sunday Puzzle! For this week’s on-air challenge, NPR's Puzzlemaster Will Shortz will name two things in the same category. You will have to determine the only other item in that category that comes alphabetically between those two things. For example, if you are provided with the clues “blue” and “indigo,” the answer would be “green.” In this instance, the category was colors of the rainbow. Test your skills here. Check the page later to hear the answers, or catch them live on Weekend Edition at 8:41 a.m. ET.

This week's online challenge comes from Joseph Young, of St. Cloud, Minn. Name what certain performers do, in two words. Rearrange the three vowels in the second word and remove the space between the words to name a country. What country is it? Submit your answer here, and you could win a chance to play next Sunday's on-air puzzle.

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