Photo by Jasper Garratt

Silicon Valley and other high tech billionaires are investing millions in start-ups dedicated to creating genetically engineered (GE) babies, according to a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report. AI mogul Sam Altman, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brian Armstrong, venture capitalist Peter Theil and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian are supplying lavish funds to explore human embryo gene editing and to market “polygenic” (i.e., multi-gene) screening of embryos for quality control.

While their brassy business models boast the goal of eliminating diseases (for which other less risky interventions are available), skeptical experts can sniff an agenda that is peddled more discretely: engineering children to “enhance” traits such as eye color, height, intelligence, and athletic ability. UC Berkeley scientist Fyodor Urnov’s critique is decisive. “These people armed with very poorly deployed sacks of cash are working on “baby improvement,” he said. University of Virginia behavioral geneticist Eric Turkheimer characterized the marketing of unproven probabilistic screening methods as “corporate eugenics.”

Even when disassociated from the eugenic savagery of WWII Nazi Germany, the tech titans’ “techno eugenics” hasten the arrival of bio-entrepreneurially created societies of genetic “haves and have-nots.” In this biotech dystopia social inequalities will literally be embedded in our DNA.

In addition to bio-amping social injustice, there are health risks for gene-edited embryos brought to term. GE children will be nonconsenting, ongoing human experiments necessitating monitoring throughout their lives. Moreover, since embryo gene-editing affects the germline of these children, their children, grandchildren, on and on down the line also will be affected. This would include the inheritance of any adverse unintended consequences, which are inevitable in large-scale applications of the technology.

Boosters forecast that it’s not a matter of if we genetically engineer our children, but when. But Center for Genetics and Society’s Executive Director, Katie Hasson finds such prognostications unconvincing and unduly passive. As of 2020, over 70 countries prohibit the use of GE modified embryos to initiate a pregnancy, she reminds, and no country explicitly allows it.

Will such a striking but fractured international stand be strong enough to curtail the impact of billionaire investment in seeding their vision of perfect tech titan progeny? Currently, the US Food and Drug Administration is prohibited from approving research applications leading to clinical applications of human embryos with heritable genetic modifications. But lobbying efforts operating in shifting political winds can see this change.

For now, business investors can shop for countries that will bring their human experiments to term. In fact, the WSJ reports that GE baby investors have, indeed, been searching for a country that allows it.

Is there a way to stem the tide? People around the globe wanting to push against the current, can add their name to the International Declaration Against Legalization of Human Genetic Modification. And then ask families, friends, and colleagues to do the same. It is the necessary first step of a political strategy for preserving a human future.

This first appeared in The Patch.

The post Tech Titans Investing Millions to Create Genetically Engineered Babies appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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