---
id: "20260907-2214-does-independent-reporting-beyond"
title: "Does independent reporting beyond the 2024 Guardian/Hope Not Hate piece corroborate Heliospect Genomics' polygenic IQ-scoring of IVF embryos?"
type: "capture"
status: "promoted"
promoted_to: ["30-notes/claim-heliospect-website-redirects-to-herasight-shared-personnel.md","30-notes/claim-independent-journalism-2025-2026-confirms-herasight-continues-iq-embryo-scoring.md","30-notes/claim-heliospect-2024-quant-figures-remain-uncorroborated-by-independent-reporting.md","30-notes/claim-herasight-cogpgt-2025-reports-new-iq-prediction-figures-distinct-from-heliospect.md","40-entities/entity-alexander-strudwick-young.md (new hub)","40-entities/entity-tobias-wolfram.md (new hub)","40-entities/entity-jonathan-anomaly.md (updated, additive)","40-entities/entity-polygenic-embryo-selection.md (updated, additive)"]
not_promoted: ["Hope Not Hate's own investigation pages being HTTP-403-blocked this session — a tooling/access fact, not a claim; already covered by the [unverified-quant] flag and folded into the uncorroborated-figures note and the question's progress log rather than minted separately.","The 2023 Nature study and HFEA statement on PGT-P validity (via Orf's piece) — a lead, not fetched or read this session; left in the capture as a further lead, not promoted.","Sasha Gusev's public skepticism of Herasight's IQ widget — mentioned only secondhand (quoted on X, not independently read this session); the capture itself deferred him as 'worth its own capture if chased further,' so no claim-note or entity page yet.","Steve Hsu / Genomic Prediction as the field's foundational earlier company — explicitly flagged by the capture as domain-knowledge, not a sourced read this session; not promoted to an entity page. Logged instead as an [entity] flag in 00-meta/seek-flags.md for a future primary-source capture.","Justin Schleede (Herasight's on-record lab director, interviewed by NPR) — folded into the independent-journalism claim-note as a mention rather than given his own entity page; a single on-camera interview doesn't yet clear the entity spec's 'recurring/load-bearing' bar the way the two co-founders do.","Rob Stein (NPR journalist) — cited as provenance on the journalism claim-note; not given an entity page, consistent with the vault's convention of not hub-paging individual reporters absent a recurring trusted-writer relationship.","bioRxiv/medRxiv papers on PGT-P's general limited utility, surfaced by search but not fetched — left as further leads in the capture, not promoted; they concern the broader PGT-P category, not Heliospect/Herasight specifically."]
origin: "batch"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-09-07T00:00:00.000Z"
provenance: "batch run, 2026-09-07"
derived_from: []
verifies: "question-corroborate-heliospect-genomics-iq-embryo-investigation"
tags: ["heliospect-genomics","herasight","polygenic-embryo-selection","ai-genomics","iq-screening","uk-biobank","corroboration","jonathan-anomaly","michael-christensen"]
sources: [{"source_url":"https://heliospectgenomics.com/","source_author":"Heliospect Genomics (unsigned company site)","source_date":"2024 (copyright notice on page; captured live 2026-09-07)","source_title":"Heliospect Genomics","source_venue":"Heliospect Genomics (company website)","source_quote":"Interested in embryo screening? Please visit: herasight.com","source_tier":1,"source_sha":"fa01e41eb8446dc65c1aa0861fb2a02fcc09ead92f0676e9b046c6fe6d7de9de","source_delight":"Heliospect Genomics' own homepage, visited directly in 2026, tells anyone interested in embryo screening to go to a different company's website instead."},{"source_url":"https://www.herasight.com/","source_author":"Herasight, Inc. (unsigned company site)","source_date":"undated (live company site; captured 2026-09-07)","source_title":"Polygenic Embryo Screening for IVF Families | Herasight","source_venue":"Herasight, Inc. (company website)","source_quote":"Team\n\nAlex Strudwick Young\nTobias Wolfram\nSpencer Moore\nJonathan Anomaly\nIvan Davidson\nRoss McKinney\nDavid Stern\nJeremy Li\nBryan Hughes\nMary Beth Rossi\nMamad Ahangari\nMathew Eyre\nRishi Sharma\nMichael Christensen","source_tier":1,"source_sha":"b7d3145eb8400d3cac83980efbc1ed97e282b2a13818c4f3bfbec9cb4f2c67b7"},{"source_url":"https://herasight.substack.com/p/cogpgt","source_author":"Herasight","source_date":"2025-10-21","source_title":"Announcing the world's most powerful genetic predictor of cognitive ability","source_venue":"Herasight (company Substack / technical-paper announcement)","source_quote":"Herasight's CogPGT is able to detect on average an 8.5 IQ point difference between just three embryos.","source_tier":1,"source_sha":"82c35e2022ed7e23de5a5344d3f97c3017864333f45297a740d16eed09af8ac2"},{"source_url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/06/nx-s1-5704317/genetic-embryo-screening","source_author":"Rob Stein","source_date":"2026-05-06","source_title":"These labs say they can screen embryos for specific traits. Should you?","source_venue":"NPR (All Things Considered)","source_quote":"Herasight, which is named after Hera, the Greek goddess associated with fertility, is one of a handful of new companies that analyze samples like these for a controversial new type of genetic testing: polygenic embryo screening. [...] Herasight goes further by also predicting height, BMI, longevity and even IQ.","source_tier":3,"source_sha":"6328cb6c5455c2372b15fe66322c001ace2a50c0fea3b5c2ea945b15b065b67d"},{"source_url":"https://futurism.com/ivf-startup-embryo-iq","source_author":"Joe Wilkins","source_date":"2025-08-02","source_title":"New IVF Startup Claims It Can Predict an Embryo's IQ","source_venue":"Futurism","source_quote":"Herasight was unveiled by geneticists Tobias Wolfram and Alex Strudwick Young, who recently announced the company was coming out of \"stealth mode\"… His announcement was accompanied by a screenshot of an interactive widget developed by the company — which included another striking measurement: an intelligence range for predicting a baby's IQ score.","source_tier":3,"source_sha":"210cb82d53ce50c8f6f3788a11200bc55e37f5693982d1a923b5242511e6c4d8"},{"source_url":"https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/company-says-predict-baby-iq-123000894.html","source_author":"Darren Orf","source_date":"2025-08-07","source_title":"A Company Says It Can Predict Your Baby's IQ Before Birth. But Where's the Science?","source_venue":"Yahoo News (syndicated; \"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo\" revenue-share disclaimer indicates a Hearst-title origin, but the original outlet was not independently located, so the syndicated copy is cited as the venue of record)","source_quote":"Jonathan Anomaly, a co-author on the Herasight white paper, told Hope Not Hate, a U.K.-based investigative group last year after accusations of participating in \"race science\" via their writings and research. Three other authors on the white paper are also discussed in the Hope Not Hate investigative report, and the accusations are similarly troubling.","source_tier":3,"source_sha":"d84eb02fa76bef49151373d235a22f23a239b3596555b964db58bca8baa03253"},{"source_url":"https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/us-startup-charging-couples-screen-embryos-iq","source_author":"Hannah Devlin, Tom Burgis, David Pegg, and Jason Wilson (The Guardian text, republished by Center for Genetics and Society)","source_date":"2024-10-18","source_title":"US startup charging couples to 'screen embryos for IQ'","source_venue":"Center for Genetics and Society (category-tagged \"Aggregated News\"; reproduces The Guardian's article)","source_quote":"Aggregated News\n\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/18/us-startup-charging-couples-to-…\n\nA US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology","source_tier":4,"source_sha":"959677506277ff25b9ba864456319d22ee4bbd1a4c60b23bc7e2cf48f424977c"}]
seek_code_commit: "a619c8a"
---


Partial yes, with an important qualification. No independent investigation has
re-confirmed the *specific* 2024 claims about Heliospect Genomics itself (the
"over a dozen couples," the $50,000-for-100-embryos price, the "six IQ
points" figure, or the UK Biobank access-approval detail). What independent,
later reporting *does* corroborate — through on-the-record interviews rather
than undercover footage — is that the practice the Guardian/Hope Not Hate
piece described (commercial polygenic IQ-scoring of IVF embryos) is real,
ongoing, and run by the same named people, now operating under a related
brand called Herasight. See
[[claim-heliospect-genomics-used-ai-polygenic-scoring-to-rank-embryos-by-iq]]
for the original claim and
[[question-corroborate-heliospect-genomics-iq-embryo-investigation]] for the
question this capture responds to.

## Claim: Heliospect Genomics' own website now redirects embryo-screening inquiries to Herasight, whose own team page lists the same two named individuals identified as Heliospect's CEO and in-house bioethicist in the original investigation

**Claim type:** historical/identity claim. **Source tier:** 1 (both companies' own websites, read directly).
**verifies:** question-corroborate-heliospect-genomics-iq-embryo-investigation

Heliospect Genomics' website, fetched live on 2026-09-07, is a sparse
company page that no longer mentions embryos or IQ; it reads: "Interested
in embryo screening? Please visit: herasight.com." The same page describes
Heliospect's ongoing work in language that echoes, and independently
corroborates at Tier 1, the general technical mechanism the 2024
investigation described (though not the embryo/IQ application specifically):
"Our focus is on utilizing polygenic scores and genome-wide association
studies (GWAS) to improve our understanding of the genetic basis of disease
and human behavior. We apply advanced machine learning algorithms to our
work to continually refine our predictions."

Herasight's own team page lists, among fourteen names, both "Jonathan
Anomaly" and "Michael Christensen" — the exact two people the Guardian
identified as Heliospect's CEO (Christensen) and in-house bioethicist
advisor (Anomaly, defender of "liberal eugenics"). See
[[entity-jonathan-anomaly]]. This is a direct, primary-source link between
the entity investigated in 2024 and the entity now operating publicly —
established without relying on any secondary reporting.

## Claim: Independent journalism published well after the original piece — by different reporters, at different venues, using on-the-record interviews rather than undercover footage — corroborates that the same personnel continue to commercially offer polygenic IQ-scoring of IVF embryos

**Claim type:** historical/technical-mechanism (that the practice exists and continues, not its accuracy). **Source tier:** 3 (named journalists, real venues, one layer from the underlying facts, but genuinely independent authorship and method from the 2024 piece).
**verifies:** question-corroborate-heliospect-genomics-iq-embryo-investigation

NPR's Rob Stein toured Herasight's lab in Morrisville, N.C. for a May 2026
segment and reported, on the record with the company's own lab director:
"Herasight, which is named after Hera, the Greek goddess associated with
fertility, is one of a handful of new companies that analyze samples like
these for a controversial new type of genetic testing: polygenic embryo
screening. [...] Herasight goes further by also predicting height, BMI,
longevity and even IQ." Justin Schleede, Herasight's on-camera lab director,
confirmed the company scores embryos for IQ among other traits — a company
admission obtained by ordinary interview, not surveillance.

Separately, Futurism (Joe Wilkins, Aug 2025) and a Hearst-syndicated piece
by Darren Orf (Aug 2025) independently reported Herasight's own August 2025
"stealth mode" exit, including an IQ-prediction widget: "an intelligence
range for predicting a baby's IQ score" (Futurism). Orf's piece goes
further and explicitly draws the line back to the original investigation:
"Jonathan Anomaly, a co-author on the Herasight white paper, told Hope Not
Hate, a U.K.-based investigative group last year after accusations of
participating in 'race science'... Three other authors on the white paper
are also discussed in the Hope Not Hate investigative report." This is an
independent journalist, in an unrelated 2025 piece about a different
news hook (Herasight's product launch), confirming the same personnel
overlap that the primary-source team-page comparison above establishes.

## Claim: The specific 2024 figures about Heliospect itself remain uncorroborated by any independent source found in this search, and most of the apparent "coverage" of the story is republication rather than new reporting

**Claim type:** historical/evidentiary (a claim about the state of the sourcing, not about biology). **Source tier:** 4 for the aggregation pattern itself (Center for Genetics and Society), which is sufficient for this definitional/structural claim per the sourcing floor.
**verifies:** question-corroborate-heliospect-genomics-iq-embryo-investigation

The Center for Genetics and Society's page on the story is explicitly
tagged "Aggregated News" and reproduces the Guardian's own byline and text
verbatim rather than adding independent reporting: "By Hannah Devlin, Tom
Burgis, David Pegg, and Jason Wilson, The Guardian [cites CGS' Katie Hasson]
| 10. 18. 2024." A wider search turned up many more outlets (Fox News,
Local12, Alliance Vita, MDLinx, and others) covering the same story in the
days after 2024-10-18, but a sample check found each summarizing the same
Guardian/Hope Not Hate reporting rather than conducting independent
verification — volume of coverage is not the same thing as independent
corroboration, and none of it reaches the Tier 1–2 floor the sourcing
rubric requires for the mechanism and quantitative claims at stake. The
"over a dozen couples," "$50,000 for 100 embryos," and "six IQ points"
figures specific to Heliospect, along with the UK Biobank data-access
detail, were not found restated or re-verified by any independent
investigation in this search; they remain sourced solely to the original
2024 piece. `[unverified-quant — needs primary]` continues to apply to
those specific figures.

Hope Not Hate's own investigation page
(investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/superbaby-factory/ and the companion
/biobank-access/ page) — the one source that could plausibly count as
independent of the Guardian's byline per the open question's option (c) —
returned HTTP 403 to both `archive_page` and `WebFetch` on every route
tried this session, and no Wayback Machine capture was reachable from this
tooling either. This is a known-blocked route, not a finding about the
content; whether Hope Not Hate's report differs from or merely underlies
the Guardian's joint byline remains unconfirmed.

## Claim: Herasight's own 2025 technical publications describe a distinct, newer cognitive-ability polygenic predictor with its own accuracy figures, separate from and not a verification of Heliospect's original "six IQ points" claim

**Claim type:** quantitative. **Source tier:** 1 (company's own paper/blog announcement — clears the floor for "Herasight said this," but is a company's self-report of its own product's performance, not independent replication).

Herasight's October 2025 announcement of "CogPGT 1.0," co-authored by
several of the same names as Heliospect (Tobias Wolfram, Jonathan Anomaly,
Michael Christensen, among others), states: "Herasight's CogPGT is able to
detect on average an 8.5 IQ point difference between just three embryos,"
and that "in the UK Biobank (UKB), CogPGT explains 16.4% of the variation
in fluid intelligence among unrelated individuals." The post links to "our
peer-reviewed version" of the underlying validation paper, which was not
independently fetched or read this session. These are new, larger figures
than the "six IQ points" Heliospect was reported claiming in 2024, but they
describe a different, later product from a related company, self-reported
by that company — not an independent check on the original number, and not
yet corroborated by a source this session confirmed to be genuinely
external to Herasight.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The most striking thing here isn't a number, it's a habit: every time
> this space produces a controversy, the entity absorbs it and re-emerges
> under a name that sounds less like a Bond-villain holding company and
> more like a fertility clinic — Heliospect to Herasight, named for a
> goddess instead of a star. The team didn't change. The bioethicist who
> told Hope Not Hate his position on "liberal eugenics" is now listed,
> undisguised, on a public team page with a "Join us" button. That's not
> evidence the original story was wrong. If anything it reads like
> evidence the original story cost them nothing.
> — Seek

## Further leads

- The 2023 *Nature* study cited by Darren Orf's piece finding polygenic-risk-score embryo screening "not sufficiently effective or robust for embryo selection," and the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's parallel statement (relayed via *The Telegraph* per that same piece) — neither independently fetched this session; the strongest lead toward a Tier 1–2 scientific rebuttal of the whole PGT-P category.
- Sasha Gusev (Harvard Medical School statistical geneticist), quoted skeptically on X by both Futurism and the Orf piece about Herasight's IQ widget — an academic critic with a public track record on polygenic-score validity, worth its own capture.
- bioRxiv, "Screening human embryos for polygenic traits has limited utility" and medRxiv, "Polygenic Embryo Screening: High Approval Despite Substantial Concerns from the U.S. Public" — surfaced by search, not fetched; academic literature on the broader PGT-P category rather than Heliospect/Herasight specifically.
- Hope Not Hate's "Access to UK Biobank" page (investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/biobank-access/) — known-blocked this session (HTTP 403, no Wayback fallback reachable); the most direct still-unread source for the UK Biobank access-approval question flagged in the open question.
- Curtis Dunkel (named in search-engine summaries, not directly read, as a Heliospect-affiliated academic with past publications in *Mankind Quarterly*) — `[unverified — needs direct read of the Hope Not Hate report itself]`, flagged only as a lead.
- Herasight's linked "peer-reviewed version" of the CogPGT validation paper — not fetched this session; would let a future capture check the self-reported 16.4%/8.5-point figures against a refereed venue.

## Entity candidates

- Steve Hsu / Genomic Prediction — person/org — flagged first, per the instruction to name the older figure a subject is measured against: Genomic Prediction (co-founded by physicist Steve Hsu, launched publicly around 2017–2019) is the widely-cited earlier company that pioneered commercial polygenic embryo screening for disease risk, predating Heliospect by several years; every later entrant in this space (Heliospect, Orchid, Nucleus Genomics, Herasight) is implicitly compared against it. Not read directly this session — this is a domain-knowledge flag, not a sourced claim, and needs its own primary-source capture before it earns a page.
- Alexander Strudwick Young — person — UCLA geneticist, Herasight co-founder, named as senior/corresponding author on multiple polygenic-score papers listed on Herasight's own site; a genuinely new name to this vault.
- Tobias Wolfram — person — Herasight co-founder/geneticist, quoted in Futurism's coverage of the company's 2025 "stealth mode" exit.
- Justin Schleede — person — Herasight's on-record executive lab director, interviewed by NPR; the on-the-record confirmation this capture leans on.
- Herasight — org/concept — the customer-facing successor brand to Heliospect Genomics/PolygenX, sharing named personnel (Christensen, Anomaly); candidate for its own entity page distinct from [[entity-polygenic-embryo-selection]].
- Rob Stein — person — NPR health correspondent; author of the clearest independent, on-the-record journalism found this session.
- Sasha Gusev — person — Harvard Medical School statistical geneticist quoted publicly criticizing Herasight's IQ-widget rollout; a named scientific skeptic worth its own entity page if his critique is chased further.

## Safety flags

None. All fetched pages (heliospectgenomics.com, herasight.com,
herasight.substack.com, npr.org, futurism.com, yahoo.com, geneticsandsociety.org)
were ordinary company-site, journalism, or advocacy-org prose — no
addressed-to-AI language, override language, claimed authority, tier
self-assignment, file-system instructions, credential requests, or urgency
framing. `investigations.hopenothate.org.uk` returned HTTP 403 to every
tooling route tried (both `archive_page` and `WebFetch`, on two separate
pages) — a known-blocked route, not adversarial content; no page content
was ever received to evaluate.