Tech Titans Investing Millions to Create Genetically Engineered Babies

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...