Real-Life Biotech Firm Petitions Star Trek's Federation on Reddit to Change Galactic Law

Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences, a biotech company that's putting together plans to orchestrate the de-extinction for animals like the dodo and the wooly mammoth, made some waves on Reddit recently when they petitioned the United Federation of Planets -- the fictional governing body of the Star Trek universe -- to waive restrictions on gene editing. In-universe, laws passed following the Eugenics Wars create a scenario where cloning based on damaged or partial DNA would be virtually impossible, as Colossal couldn't "fix" the holes in the DNA (think Jurassic Park using frogs to plug holes in the dinosaur DNA and you're in the right neighborhood). It's a fun way of bringing visibility to the company's wildly ambitious plans, and for the most part, Reddit took it in the intended spirit.

The comments are full of very serious conversations about the laws of the Federation and how they would and would not apply to Colossal's business. When one commenter notes that cloning itself isn't forbidden, just editing to "improve" a being, Colossal counters that they previously "used genetic engineering to alter the...