“Designer Babies: When IVF Becomes Human Design” with Dr. Tara Sander Lee | Ep. 20

IVF was introduced as a way to address infertility, even though it is fraught with ethical problems. But today, it increasingly involves grading embryos, screening genetic traits, and deciding which embryos are chosen.   Are we entering an era where reproduction becomes human design?

In this episode, Harvard-trained biochemist Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D. explains how modern IVF increasingly involves eugenic practices. We examine:

• When human life begins from a scientific standpoint
  • How embryo grading determines which embryos are transferred, frozen, or discarded
  • The difference between single-gene disorder screening and polygenic risk scores
  • Whether “designer babies” are already a reality
  • The ethical risks of genetic trait selection
  • What the Tiffany Score & Steven Mills IVF embryo mix-up revealed about industrialized reproduction
  • Whether gene editing and CRISPR can ever be ethical

As IVF expands beyond infertility “treatment” and into optimization, urgent questions emerge about human dignity, disability, and the moral limits of reproductive technology.

This is a conversation about science, power, and whether medicine is meant to heal people or to redesign them.