Silicon Valley’s Plausible Path to the Designer Baby Business—Even Though It’s Illegal

There is growing appetite in Silicon Valley for the legally murky and morally frowned upon practice of embryo-editing.

This is how it would work: Companies would use existing gene-editing technology called Crispr to cut unwanted traits from the DNA of an embryo, sperm, or an egg.

Two startups in particular have made headlines within the past month for their work in the field. There’s Preventive, a California-based startup backed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his husband. The startup has reportedly already identified a couple interested in using their services, but the company denies that claim.

Then there’s the New York-based Manhattan Genomics, which was co-founded by a former recipient of tech investor and antichrist-lecturer Peter Thiel’s fellowship that gives people money to drop out of college and start a business.

There’s one small hiccup though. The practice, which has been the subject of newfound investor interest, is banned by law in the United States.

Not only would these startups be barred from editing embryos within the United States, they would also face federal restrictions on research and development attempting to perfect the technology. Privately, they can research whatever they want but, according to FDA policy, they can’t spend any federal funds on embryo-editing research and can’t obtain clinical approval to use an embryo that has been edited.

That doesn’t leave much leeway for these companies, according to New York University professor of bioethics Arthur Caplan.

“It’s very easy for the government to link private activities to government funding, because they’ll say things like ‘Well, you used a DNA sequencer, and that was built with NIH money, so you can’t use that,’†Caplan told Gizmodo.

But, of course, there are loopholes. These companies could have their headquarters be set in the United States, and even theoretically do business with American couples, so long as the embryo-editing and planting takes place in another country where the law is on their side.

There are currently no countries that explicitly allow and regulate heritable embryo gene editing, aka embryo gene editing that results in an actual baby, but there are countries that are relatively more friendly towards the practice than the United States and a group of other countries that don’t have any laws explicitly governing it.

Several countries, like China and the United Kingdom allow the embryo editing for research but strictly prohibit it for reproductive purposes. In 2018, China was host to the only documented instance of edited embryos carried to term. The scientist that produced the embryos was sentenced to three years in prison, but went back to work to research embryo gene editing as of last year. In a twist straight out of a book, that researcher is also the former lover of Cathy Tie, the Thiel fellow who co-founded Manhattan Genomics.

Naturally, both startups are on the hunt for just the right place for an operation of this kind. Preventive is looking into stationing their experiments in the United Arab Emirates, while Manhattan Genomics plans to conduct its tests in Honduras, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Even though the current American legal and ethical framework is against the practice, once the industry starts scaling in Silicon Valley, and the scientific advancements start piling up and the money begins pouring in, that could tip the scale in its favor.

In the report, the WSJ claimed that Armstrong, who backs Preventive, had floated a plan to shock the world into acceptance by having startups conduct their work in private and unveil a healthy baby that came from a genetically engineered embryo. However, a spokeswoman for Armstrong denied that he would ever recommend that way of operating for Preventive, and said he had agreed the plan was a bad idea.

The purported goal of both of these startups, and many more emerging, is to end debilitating genetic diseases like sickle cell. If they do succeed in that goal, it could help humanity eradicate many diseases, and even generally tweak babies to boost the immune systems of a new generation.

But there are multiple problems. One is the risk that comes with each gene edit. Even though the technology has gotten significantly better, it’s still rather fragile. Edits can still lead to off-target effects that could cause even greater problems than the ones they were trying to erase.

“You don’t want to kill or deform a baby just because you were hoping to make him a better violinist,†Caplan said.

The second hurdle is access. Embryo gene editing isn’t likely to be a cheap and easy procedure, Caplan points out. So imagine the ethical and societal catastrophe it would present if you have that power only available to a tiny elite minority to make super babies.

The third is that the practice, no matter how many times the people in charge of it claim it would only be used to prevent life-threatening diseases only, could still very easily be the first step to a road that leads to eugenics.

“The way to sell it to the world is through disease prevention or ameliorating genetic diseases, and showing you can do that. Then you start to open the path to ‘how about I start to improve my kids,’ which no doubt is the goal of the wealthy out there, they told you this a thousand times,†Caplan said. “Eugenics runs super strong in Silicon Valley.â€