Polygenic embryo screening in Australia: What you need to know before considering overseas testing
Why Australian IVF patients are travelling overseas for unproven genetic testing – and what the evidence actually shows
If you’re exploring IVF options in Australia, you may have encountered marketing for overseas genetic testing that claims to rank your embryos by predicted intelligence, height, hair colour, and disease risk. Some Australian patients are travelling internationally to access these tests, spending tens of thousands of dollars on the promise of choosing their “best” embryo. I want to help you understand what these tests can and cannot deliver, and why I don’t recommend them.
The gap between marketing and reality
The technology is called polygenic risk scoring. One US company charges approximately $44,000 AUD to screen 20 embryos across up to 2,000 traits. Clients receive what essentially amounts to a comparison menu: embryo A has a predicted IQ advantage, embryo B is predicted to be taller, embryo C has lower heart disease risk. The marketing is compelling. “Have a smarter baby,” the advertisements promise. “Anyone can have a taller, smarter, and healthier baby.”
Here’s the critical truth: patients are being misled into believing they are making a meaningful choice about their child’s future when, in reality, these tests have very little bearing on how a child will actually grow up.
DNA is only half the story
This is where I need to be direct with you. DNA does not determine your child’s destiny. The environment your child grows up in has an enormous influence on which genes are expressed and how.
Consider these environmental factors: diet, home life, stress levels, access to education, exposure to pollution, parental engagement, early childhood experiences. These are not abstract concepts. They are concrete, measurable influences on human development – and they are completely invisible to polygenic testing.
This is called epigenetics, and it is something these tests cannot account for at all. If you select an embryo predicted to have a genetic advantage for IQ based on a score that represents perhaps 2 to 3 IQ points at best, but that child grows up in a home without access to quality education, or with high stress, or with poor nutrition, the environmental factors will overwhelm any genetic advantage you thought you were buying.
It’s like choosing seeds based on their genetic potential for height while ignoring soil quality, sunlight, and water. You’re optimising for one variable while ignoring the variables that actually matter more.
The ancestry problem
There’s another issue that affects many Australian patients. The genetic databases these scores are built from are drawn predominantly from people of European ancestry. This means the tests are significantly less accurate – and in some cases essentially useless – for patients from other backgrounds, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, Asian Australians, African Australians, and people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent.
If you don’t fit the ancestral profile of the database, you’re paying tens of thousands of dollars for predictions based on populations that don’t genetically resemble you. That’s not good medicine.
The hidden trade-offs you won’t see
Here’s something the comparison charts won’t show you. One gene typically affects multiple traits. When you select an embryo predicted to achieve higher educational attainment, you may simultaneously increase the risk of bipolar disorder by as much as 16 per cent. These are not trade-offs that appear on a menu. They’re buried in the data, and many patients never know they’ve made them.
Decision-making becomes extraordinarily complex when you’re presented with dozens of embryos, each with different risk profiles across hundreds of traits. Do you prioritise lower heart disease risk or lower Alzheimer’s risk? Do you choose the embryo with predicted IQ advantage even if it has higher schizophrenia risk? These aren’t straightforward medical decisions. They’re impossible value judgements that leave many patients feeling paralysed by choice.
What Australia’s regulatory bodies say
Under Australia’s current National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines, polygenic risk scoring for embryo selection is not permitted in local fertility clinics. This is a deliberate regulatory choice, made by experts in reproductive medicine and genetics, because the technology is considered unproven and raises serious ethical concerns.
The Fertility Society of Australia’s Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee is clear: “As polygenic risk scoring is currently unproven, it should not be offered to patients in clinical practice.”
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine reached the same conclusion in December 2025, stating that polygenic embryo testing should not be offered because of ethical concerns and inaccuracy.
But there’s a legal gap. Nothing prevents Australian patients from travelling overseas to access these tests, and some are doing exactly that. You can pay for overseas testing, bring the results back, and have them interpreted by an Australian clinic. The regulatory protection exists at the clinic level, not the patient level.
Why I’m cautious about this technology
I’m cautious because patients deserve honest information, not marketing hype, when making profound decisions about their children’s futures. The scientific evidence doesn’t support the claims being made. The environmental factors that actually shape a child’s development are completely absent from these scores. And the ethical risks – the potential for these tests to reinforce discrimination and social inequality – are real.
If you’re considering IVF and want to understand what embryo genetic testing is genuinely supported by evidence for your situation, I’d encourage you to discuss your options in a consultation. There are proven, ethical ways to use genetic testing in IVF. Polygenic risk scoring is not one of them.