What If Tinder Showed Your IQ?
The not-so-young parents sat in the office of their socio-genetic consultant, an occupation that emerged in the late 2030s, with at least one practitioner in every affluent fertility clinic. They faced what had become a fairly typical choice: Twelve viable embryos had been created in their latest round of in vitro fertilization. Anxiously, they pored over the scores for the various traits they had received from the clinic. Eight of the 16-cell morulae were fairly easy to eliminate based on the fact they had higher-than-average risks for either cardiovascular problems or schizophrenia, or both. That left four potential babies from which to choose. One was going to be significantly shorter than the parents and his older sibling. Another was a girl, and since this was their second, they wanted a boy to complement their darling Rita, now entering the terrible twos. Besides, this girl had a greater than one-in-four chance of being infertile. Because this was likely to be their last child, due to advancing age, they wanted to maximize the chances they would someday enjoy grandchildren.
That left two male embryos. These embryos scored almost identically on disease risks, height, and body mass index. Where they differed was in the realm of brain development. One scored a predicted IQ of 180 and the other a “mere” 150. A generation earlier, a 150 IQ would have been high enough to assure an economically secure life in a number of occupations. But with the advent of voluntary artificial selection, a score of 150 was only above average. By the mid 2040s, it took a score of 170 or more to insure your little one would grow up to become a knowledge leader.
At the same time, the merger of 23andMe—the largest genetics database in the world—and InterActiveCorp (owner of Tinder and OKCupid), and their subsequent integration with Facebook, meant that not only were embryos being selected for implantation based on their future abilities and deficits, but that people were also screening potential spouses based on genotype. Rather than just
