Code of Ethics

At Zeta, our mission is to make alternative fertility methods more affordable and accessible. We also believe that everyone should be able to start a family. For couples that are physically incapable of conceiving through sexual reproduction either due to medical issues or for their sexual denomination, in vitro fertilization is currently one of the only viable options for conceiving a biological child. We choose to provide our matchmaking services to ease the process of finding a donor in the hopes that this will lead to a happy and healthy life for a child conceived through in vitro fertilization. 

 

We, like many others, envision a future of no disease, unlimited access to life’s many opportunities, and the ability to live freely. While such ideals can seem abstract, distant, or plain unrealistic, we must still choose to step toward these ideals. This decision to move toward a goal guides our company’s mission and purpose. As genetic technology progresses, all people will have a collective responsibility to decide how it used to better our world. While discoveries are being made every day, we must all decide where to draw to the line. 

 

Today, science has enabled us to read the genetic code of embryos before implantation into the mother. Soon, we believe that science will enable us to edit the code of an embryo and give or take away the traits of a baby. While observing existing DNA helps to prevent babies from being born with unnecessary diseases, there is another level of power and responsibility associated with editing the code of a potentially living person. While we believe in reducing human suffering by preventing the birth of babies with genetic diseases, we do not believe in the enhancement of human beings for the sake of performance whether intellectual, athletic, or aesthetic. 

 

As the science fiction of the previous decades become the reality of the current decade, we must collectively fight to preserve genetic diversity and economic equality. By providing equal access to genetic technologies and regulating the practice of genetic engineering, we believe that no culture or way of life will be marginalized. Today, using preimplantation screening, we can identify embryos with DNA that code for eye color, hair color, and sex. Tomorrow, we could use the same technology to identify musical affinity, emotional or raw intelligence, and superior athletic performance. Further still, we can see a future where gene-editing technologies are used to make changes to the DNA of an existing embryo to achieve traits that would not occur otherwise, entering a new frontier for our species.

 

With the majority of the discoveries lying ahead of us, we must establish a point of view in the present. As new technologies are developed in research labs around the world, we must be vigilant and work every day to protect genetic diversity and prevent the economic inequality that could result from unregulated use. Zeta was founded with the guiding principle of providing equal access to genetic technologies to people of all cultures, nationalities, and religious denominations. We believe that this code of ethics will help us navigate a future of unprecedented breakthroughs in genetic engineering.