An advertisement displayed in a New York City subway station promotes Nucleus Genomics’ embryo-screening services with the slogan “Have Your Best Baby.” Featuring photographs of infants, the campaign frames genetic selection as a way to optimize future offspring, raising broader ethical questions about reproductive choice.
Image Credit : Nucleus Genomics. Original photograph. https://mynucleus.com/have-your-best-baby-2025
The faces of smiling babies cover the walls of New York City subway stations: the advertisements, featuring the slogan “Have Your Best Baby,” present an unusual proposition to commuters. The campaign, launched by the genetic testing company Nucleus Genomics in November 2025, paired photographs of children with claims about desirable traits. “IQ is 50% genetic,” one advertisement read. “Height is 80% genetic,” announced another. A third offered a simple promise: “Have a healthier baby.” For someone who has spent years and thousands of dollars trying to become a parent, that promise may carry particular weight.
Behind the alluring advertisements is an emerging application of reproductive technology. Nucleus Genomics offers prospective parents undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) the ability to compare embryos using genetic information. However, its services extend beyond testing for certain inherited diseases. The company also advertises predictions related to height, eye color, intelligence, and risks for complex genetic conditions.
For prospective parents, the appeal may seem straightforward: if technology can provide more information about an embryo’s future health, why not use it?
But the subway campaign raises a more complicated question. When does preventing disease become selecting a future child's characteristics—and when does that selection begin to resemble eugenics?
Genetic testing is not new to reproductive medicine. For years, prospective parents undergoing IVF have been able to test embryos for certain chromosomal abnormalities or genetic disorders. Dr. Hugh Taylor, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, explained that standard preimplantation genetic testing can identify chromosomal abnormalities and disease-causing mutations with relatively high accuracy. But he distinguished those established applications from newer attempts to predict complex traits. “Some of the things that they are claiming to be able to test for,” Taylor said, “I don't think we even have a good definition of what those things are, no less what genes really are responsible for them.” Intelligence, he noted, may involve “hundreds, if not thousands, of genes,” alongside significant environmental influences.
Newer screening methods use polygenic scores, which combine information from many genes to estimate the likelihood of a condition or trait. But a score is a prediction, not a guarantee. Researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine have cautioned that such scores may be less useful when comparing embryos from the same parents, as a child’s environment and genetic ancestry also affect how reliably those predictions apply.
a score is a prediction, not a guarantee
This distinction is significant when testing shifts from disease risk to traits such as height or intelligence. A 2019 study examining embryo screening for polygenic traits estimated relatively modest average gains from selecting among embryos using then-current technology and emphasized substantial uncertainty in predicting actual outcomes.
Barry Behr, an embryologist and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University, also distinguished established disease testing from attempts to predict intelligence, emphasizing that identifying a known disease-causing mutation is not the same as reliably forecasting a child’s abilities decades later. Behr argued that companies should demonstrate that their predictions correspond to meaningful outcomes before marketing them to patients: “You can say what you want but there's no accountability there. You have to be quite honest.”
Behr explained that the meaning of a “best embryo” has changed in reproductive marketing. In an embryology laboratory, the term traditionally refers to an embryo most likely to implant and produce a successful pregnancy. In this new market, it can mean the embryo predicted to have preferred traits such as height or intelligence. Thus, medicine is no longer being asked only which embryo is most likely to become a child, but which will produce the most desirable child.
Information or Influence?
Yet, Nucleus Genomics frames its model as an expansion of reproductive autonomy. The company emphasizes that it sees its role as providing prospective parents with additional genetic information rather than influencing which embryo to select. According to the company, its reports present predictions as probabilities rather than certainties, and patients, in consultation with their physicians and genetic counselors, make the final decisions. The company also maintains that health information, rather than nonmedical traits, is the primary consideration for most patients using its service.
Dr. Nathan Treff, Nucleus’ chief clinical officer, said the company provides information rather than directing parents toward a particular embryo. “It’s really not our place to tell patients what to do with the information,” he said. According to Treff, reports present probabilities, not certainties, and patients make decisions with their clinicians. Treff maintained that medical concerns are central to why many families seek screening.
Treff also rejected the idea that screening is the same as creating “designer babies.” Nucleus does not edit DNA or assemble desired characteristics; it analyzes embryos already created through IVF. He compared information about nonmedical traits to embryo sex information already available through chromosomal testing. For him, expanding access to information does not amount to genetic enhancement.
expanding access to information does not amount to genetic enhancement
But advertising does more than tell consumers that a choice exists. It can also influence what consumers come to believe they should choose. Michael Mackert, a professor specializing in health communication and advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, said campaigns can shape social ideas about what responsible parenting means. “Advertising can definitely help shape norms and create pressure for some parents to feel like it's a thing they need to do to be the best parent they can be,” he said.
Mackert cautioned against designing a campaign solely by what fits on a subway wall. That pressure becomes significant when complicated probabilities are reduced to numbers. Genetic literacy varies widely, and Mackert doubted that most commuters would readily distinguish a statistic about a population from a prediction about one embryo. “Expecting a lot of people to understand that exact distinction is expecting an awful lot out of the average consumer,” he said.
Public opinion also reveals a divide between preventing illness and choosing preferred traits in babies. A prospective parent may welcome testing for a severe inherited illness while feeling uneasy about comparing children by height or intelligence. Others may regard both uses as personal decisions that outsiders should not police. These competing intuitions help explain why the same technology can appear to one consumer as medical reassurance and to another as a market for preferred human characteristics. They also complicate any simple division between scientific capability and public acceptance. Research surveying members of the U.S. public, IVF patients, and reproductive endocrinologists found that screening for nonmedical traits raised more concerns about eugenics than screening for medical conditions.
Giselle Newton, a researcher of fertility advertising and donor conception, questioned whether individual choice fully captures the social consequences of the industry. Her research on fertility advertisements in Australia has documented an expanding market that encourages people to manage reproduction long before they seek infertility treatment. In discussing companies that market reproductive services, she argued that emphasizing choice can obscure commercial incentives to establish “a kind of hierarchy of the most desirable outcome and the least desirable outcome.” Such hierarchies, she suggested, risk shaping which traits prospective parents learn to value.
Eugenics historically sought to shape reproduction according to judgments about which people were “fit” to have children. In the United States, compulsory sterilization laws targeted people labeled disabled, poor, or otherwise undesirable; the Supreme Court upheld one such law in Buck v. Bell in 1927. Nazi Germany carried racial eugenics to genocidal extremes during World War II. Modern voluntary embryo screening is not equivalent to those coercive programs; however, the history explains why language ranking human traits carries political weight, especially when reproductive choices are shaped by unequal resources and social prejudice.
Nucleus Genomics rejects a direct comparison with state-directed eugenics: parents choose whether to undergo IVF and screening, and the company does not decide which embryo to transfer. The distinction between coercion and choice is real, although critics question whether individual choices can be separated entirely from social pressure.
Treff disputed the idea that anyone can define an objectively superior child. “ There’s no best baby ,” he said; what matters depends on a family’s circumstances and priorities. He also warned against “reproductive paternalism”—the idea that professionals or policymakers should withhold potentially useful information because they distrust parents to decide responsibly. In his view, restricting access to inherited-disease information can itself undermine reproductive freedom.
From an advertising perspective, Janelle Applequist, a health communication scholar who studies pharmaceutical advertising and a professor at the University of South Florida, saw a similar implication in the slogan. “Best baby implies that there's a bad baby,” she said. The slogan may initially sound like what advertisers call “puffery,” an exaggerated promotional boast, but Applequist argued that its meaning changes when it appears beside numerical claims about IQ and other characteristics. At that point, she said, the advertisement shifts from a boast to a promise that must be substantiated.
Best baby implies that there's a bad baby
Applequist placed the campaign within a broader commercialization of health. Drawing on the idea of “pharmaceutical fetishism,” in which medical products are marketed as offering consumers control and possibilities extending beyond their clinical purpose, she argued that embryo screening could represent a further evolution of that phenomenon. “I see Nucleus now doing that with a child,” she said. “The embryo is becoming a product with a score.”
Newton drew a parallel with donor conception, where prospective parents may be presented with extensive profiles and apparent opportunities to select desirable characteristics. She described the growing use of donor-selection apps as a “Tinderization” of donor conception, while warning that the appearance of abundant choice can disguise practical limits and unequal access. Genetic screening may bring real medical benefits, she acknowledged, but expanding menus of reproductive options can also bring additional costs and create pressure to pursue an idealized outcome.
Taylor expanded on this disparity, warning that trait selection could be limited to those who can afford it, particularly in wealthier countries. Behr also identified cost as a major barrier. The resulting divide would not merely concern access to fertility care: it could turn the ability to evaluate a future child’s predicted characteristics into another advantage purchased by affluent parents.
Nucleus acknowledges that IVF is expensive but disputes the idea that its screening is inherently an elite service. The company emphasizes that the larger barrier is often the cost of IVF itself, and that pricing can vary with the number of viable embryos tested. Even so, affordability remains a political question if access to reproductive information increasingly depends on income.
An image published by MIT Technology Review documents the advertising campaign surrounding Nucleus Genomics’ embryo-screening services. The campaign has prompted debate over the growing commercialization of reproductive genetics and the ethical implications of allowing prospective parents to select embryos based on predicted genetic characteristics
Image Credit : MIT Technology Review, December 2025. Original photograph. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/05/1128755/selling-the-sizzle-of-trait-discrimination/
Whose Future, Whose Choice?
Shelly Simana, a scholar of law and genetics at Boston College, identified another set of considerations often absent from discussions of parental choice: those of the future child. Genetic information derived from embryos can reveal information about parents and relatives, she explained, but also may affect a child’s ability to define their own identity. According to Simana, overarching parental autonomy fails to recognize the rights and “open future” of the next generation of children. She argued that genetic information about both medical conditions and nonmedical traits is sensitive and that companies’ responsibilities extend beyond producing reports to accurately explaining their significance.
The National Advertising Division of BBB National Programs brought another dimension to the debate in September 2026. After reviewing advertising for Nucleus IVF+, it recommended that Nucleus modify or discontinue several claims, including representations that the service could accurately identify which embryo would grow up tallest or smartest and determine a future child’s eye and hair colors. Nucleus said it would appeal.
For Simana, informed consent of the parents is an important starting point, but it does not settle whether a company’s interpretations are supported by adequate evidence. Newton similarly called for greater oversight of what fertility businesses can promise in advertisements. Her research focuses especially on targeted social media advertising, where she examines how consumers are unable to avoid ubiquitous campaigns. Although Nucleus’s subway advertisements are visible to a broad public, Newton noted that advertising in public spaces can both prompt valuable conversations and influence what people come to regard as normal or desirable.
Applequist also distinguished between advertising that simply makes consumers aware of a service and advertising that makes claims about what the service can deliver. In her view, a company’s obligation is not exhausted by meeting a narrow legal standard: when the subject is reproduction, truthful claims and the potential consequences for families and society also matter. She argued that the campaign risks exploiting a deeply emotional decision. “It feels like you are preying on a highly emotional subject and making promises that I don’t think you can keep,” she said. For patients who have endured unsuccessful cycles or fear passing on disease, an appealing advertisement may be difficult to treat as ordinary consumer persuasion.
For decades, advances in reproductive medicine have expanded what parents can know and choose before a child is born. The newest generation of embryo screening pushes that ability further. Yet Taylor drew a line between medicine aimed at preventing serious disease and attempts to optimize human traits. “As a physician, I prefer to treat disease and not pass judgment on the beautiful variety we have as humans that make us richer and more diverse,” he said.
For a family staring at another negative pregnancy test, an empty crib, or an ultrasound image, the hope of a healthy baby is powerful enough on its own. Yet, a subway advertisement promising the “best” one transforms that hope into a competition, inviting parents to imagine their future child not as someone to welcome, but as someone to optimize. Here, somewhere between the laboratory and the nursery, a question begins to take root: if a better child was supposedly within reach, would choosing anything less mean they had already failed?