Usage of DNA in Science and Society:

Startup companies Nucleus Genomics and Herasight have begun publicly offering genetic predictions of intelligence to help parents choose which embryos to implant during in vitro fertilization (IVF). This process is called preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic traits (PGT-P). These services cost up to $50,000 at Herasight. An example is Simone and Malcolm Collins, former tech and venture-capital professionals, who have had four children through IVF and used Herasight to analyze some of their embryos. Simone said they chose the embryo she is now pregnant with partly because it showed a low cancer risk, but also because it ranked in “the 99th percentile” for predicted intelligence based on a polygenic score (bit.ly/4p0ymS2). On one hand, this practice is a de facto acknowledgment that even before implantation, an embryo is a distinct human life, with DNA already determining the physical characteristics of the developing child. On the other hand, PGT-P typically involves testing 10 to 20 fertilized eggs to give parents choices based on desired traits. What happens to the embryos that are not chosen? Although parents like the Collins implicitly recognize these embryos as human life, the routine destruction or indefinite freezing of the unused embryos is callous, and ruthless.

DNA is also used in criminal justice. Courts have long held (since 1990) that an arrest warrant based on a suspect’s DNA profile satisfies the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a specific description of the defendant (bit.ly/44xBy05). This forensic use of DNA rests on the same scientific reality as PGT-P: DNA uniquely identifies an individual human being. Science and societal practice thus converge on the same truth—human life begins at fertilization. Even though an embryo cannot yet reason, communicate, or choose, its developmental continuity is clear: Every human adult was once an embryo. How can we be so callous as to know that science acknowledges human life begins at fertilization, and learn that our courts already treat DNA as the gold standard for identifying an individual, and then ignore this when a human life is at stake in abortion?

Origins of this callousness dates back to the start of the Roe v. Wade era in 1973 when the Supreme Court supposedly found a right to abortion in the “penumbra” of the US Constitution. Reported child abuse cases rose from 167,000 in 1973 to 3.2 million by 1997—a nineteen-fold increase (ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments, Randy Alcorn, page 144). There was no 19-fold increase in U.S residents in this period, so the root cause cannot be explained by population growth. This reset of the rate of child abuse in the USA since 1973 reflects an entire society turning callous, viewing children as expendable, first before birth, then after.

Genetic selection services like PGT-P are extraordinarily expensive and only accessible to the very wealthy. The affluent are racing toward the idea that they can select embryos based on predicted intelligence, disease risk, or other traits, moving us toward a future where the rich can “opt out” of genetic vulnerability while the poverty-stricken cannot. Over time, sickness, disability, and disadvantage will increasingly concentrate among the poor. Thus, we see the callousness and ruthlessness of the child-abuse-reset by 1994 having a modern analog occurring in the 2020s and 2030s with embryo selection by the well-to-do. This isn’t progress—it’s a sign of eugenics rearing its ugly head, framed as choice and science.

Another analog to the child-abuse-rate reset is evident right now in the callous and ruthless behavior showing up in the Left’s slide into violence. Since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe in 2022, more than 500 churches and 96 pro-life pregnancy centers have been attacked (bit.ly/452kvU4, bit.ly/3N87W3i). Virginia Democrats elected Jay Jones as attorney general last month, despite the revelation of text messages he sent in 2022 about a Republican fellow-legislator, Todd Gilbert, saying, “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head” and “do I think Todd and Jennifer…are breeding little fascists? Yes” (jayjonestexts.com, bit.ly/3MIp8fU).  Jay Jones' words are callous and ruthless.

At the national level, Democratic senators' language in legislation extending Obama-era insurance subsidies would bypass the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited federal funding of abortion since 1977. According to Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), “the underlying framework of Obamacare comports (aligns) with Hyde Amendment restrictions, but Democrats are insisting that enhanced premium subsidies … not be covered by the (Hyde Amendment) abortion language (bit.ly/3Yz8Mst).” Action alert!  Voters should contact hickenlooper.senate.gov and bennet.senate.gov to ask why Democrats refuse to conform their bill to the Hyde Amendment and tell them the callous, ruthless violence against unborn babies in utero must end.

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Lloyd Benes, retired engineer, Loveland (Colorado) resident