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Assuming the technology works, it won't be a big deal. For one, the differences in IQ between siblings tends to be small.
More practically most people who use IVF only have a few embryos. Older mothers especially will have fewer. And many or most embryos either won't be viable or will have other defects that dominate a small IQ effect.
So even though this will be sold as some sort of Gattaca situation, in practice it might end up with a mother choosing an embryo with an IQ of 110 +/- 15 over one with an IQ of 108 +/- 15. And the cost of $50k for such a small benefit will dissuade all but the richest people.
I do agree that I don't expect this to change the world drastically. Most babies will continue to be born the old-fashioned way.
But you're assuming that this technology doesn't change the kind, or number of parents that get IVF. Think about tiger parents who send their three year old children to pre-MBA programmes. Do you think they wouldn't be willing to do something that actually makes a difference to their future children's outcomes? Even if it is only 2 IQ points, that's worth more than violin lessons or debate club.
Plus, we can reasonably expect the price to come down as more companies enter the space (there are already two that I know of). Soon enough, I expect the current 'doctor eyeballs the embryos to decide which one to implant' to be replaced with genetic testing in most IVF clinics. If you're already paying for the IVF, why not pay a little extra to give your future child a better chance in life?
Yeah, it pushes things forward very, very slightly.
Note that Orchid has already been offering genetic testing for other things for awhile now, and it has a very small number of users. (But among them, Elon Musk!)
But Gattaca this ain't. The number of IVF babies is ridiculously low. Only about 2.5% of babies in the US are conceived via IVF, almost all of whom are born to older mothers. If you want to have a high IQ baby, then conceiving naturally at 25 will give you far better odds than using this technology at age 38.
But in any case, let's say 10% of IVF babies use this service and the average IQ bump is 2 points.
This will result in 2.5% * 10% * 2 points = 0.005 points higher IQ among all babies. This doesn't even come close to offsetting the natural dysgenic trends from older mothers and low IQ people having more kids.
The reason for the low number of babies via IVF is because of the expense.
You'd have to decrease the cost of IVF to a large degree in order to see any real changes on a measurable scale.
You're typical minding. I predict that with cheap IVF there won't be a huge increase in IVF births because the people who will do this are strivers with .7 TFR that by its nature won't move the needle much.
That and, well, there's more kinds of expense than just the purely monetary -- IVF is inherently a somewhat invasive medical procedure (apparently involving a good amount of being poked with Big Honking Needles while the doctor watches on ultrasound to make sure that the right bit is being poked, as well as dosing with hormone treatments with occasional interesting side effects) and even without the current multi-thousand-dollar medical bills this is a "cost" that people may reasonably decide they don't want to pay.
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Are there even many anecdotes of people choosing IVF as their first choice method of conception? Maybe there are some worried about serious recessive genetic disorders, although most examples I can think of there seem more focused on pre-screening before marriage. The folks I've known who have done IVF largely tried most other options first, and are out of time to have a TFR that seems likely to cause massive changes in the future. I don't know the specifics, but I hear it's not exactly as fun as the more, er, traditional method, and pretty expensive.
I guess I could see that changing long-term, but it seems like it'd be a hard sell to a couple getting married young-ish and wanting a large family.
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This will of course be more than compensated for by the TFR declines in groups that adopt it widely. Even if the cost declines it’s still a big, expensive deal compared to not taking some pills because your trailer needs the pitter-patter of little feet, and so I would expect it to if anything be bad for elite human capital over the long run.
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