The designer-baby debate usually starts with changing DNA. A new ethics correspondence argues that it also needs to confront another route: choosing which embryo to use on the basis of genetic predictions.
Published in Nature Medicine on 23 September 2026, “Embryo editing and embryo selection need joint governance” connects progress in laboratory editing with the expanding market for reproductive genomics. The authors write on behalf of the INSERM Ethics Committee. This is ethical correspondence, not a clinical trial, regulatory approval or demonstration that edited babies can safely be born.
Selection and editing are different technologies
Gene editing changes a DNA sequence. Embryo selection uses information about embryos created through IVF—fertilisation outside the body—to help determine which one is transferred. Selection itself does not rewrite an embryo’s DNA.
The UK fertility regulator’s guide to embryo testing distinguishes testing for specific inherited conditions from polygenic testing. “Polygenic” means involving many genetic variants. A polygenic risk score combines information across variants to estimate relative susceptibility to a condition.
A risk score is a statistical prediction, not a forecast of a child’s entire future. That distinction becomes especially important when commercial language makes embryo ranking sound like a dependable route to a healthier life.
The Nature Medicine authors note that commercial offerings have moved beyond serious single-gene disorders towards broader genome profiling and ranking. They also caution that laboratory editing advances do not establish a clinical justification for changes that could be inherited by future generations.
The regulator’s position is already concrete
In a 4 February 2026 statement, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority says PGT-P—preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders—is not lawful in the UK. It says the evidence does not establish clinical benefit from selecting embryos this way.
The HFEA also explains that having an analysis performed abroad does not make it lawful for a UK clinic to select embryos using unauthorised results. Its position is jurisdiction-specific: it should not be mistaken for a worldwide ban, or for a claim that every type of embryo testing has the same evidence base.
This is where marketing and oversight collide. Something being offered commercially does not establish that it is clinically validated. A sophisticated sequencing method can produce extensive data without establishing that a particular decision based on those data improves outcomes.
Governance reaches beyond the laboratory
Our view is that joint governance is a useful starting point because editing and selection can converge on similar social questions while posing different technical risks.
Those questions include how claims should be tested, what prospective parents are told, how uncertain predictions are presented and who can afford the services. They also include which characteristics society considers appropriate to rank.
The latest correspondence does not settle those disputes. It makes a timely point: rules focused only on the act of editing DNA can leave the commercial power of genetic selection outside the main conversation.
Featured image: Laboratory context photographed at Trnava University; it does not depict the embryo research discussed in this article. Photo: Trnava University / Unsplash.
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