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‘There is no way to stop this’: Canadian biotech entrepreneur wants to genetically modify babies
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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The full genetic makeup of an individual is very complex, possibly infinitely so and to jiggle a small part is to potentially create more long-term defects than it fixes and possibly even bring the whole house of cards down. Not to mention on a species level if that individual survives to breeding age those crude modifications can enter the common gene pool.
While I 100 % agree with the general sentiment that this is a terrible idea, I think your line of thought is a bit off. We have been made by evolution, a process built on the simple fact that any change that is too crappy will prevent itself from spreading, since the carriers of that change will be less likely to reproduce. Evolution is extremely efficient at preventing really crappy modifications from spreading. Thus, I don't think our primary concern should be about these modifications "entering the common gene pool". If they really are shitty modifications, their carriers will be less likely to survive/reproduce, and they'll be watered down/wiped out by evolution.
I think what we should be worried about is twofold: First, it's directly dystopic to imagine children born with defects that have been wilfully introduced, and which may not become apparent until in many years. Experimenting on unborn children this way is absolutely abhorrent. The second is the possibility that this actually works out in some ways, and is reserved for the super-rich, in which we can literally end up creating a human super-race that will inevitably suppress and exploit the rest of humanity.
Basically whether this works out or not, all outcomes look pretty bad. The only ethical way I could see this being done is using it to remove known defects such as hereditary diseases, and doing that through public programs aimed at eliminating those diseases at a population level. Doing something like that hinges on the program not being run by people like the one in the article.
That doesn't apply to humans, they can store food for decades and aren't bound to Evolutionary advantage to survive.
That's not how evolution works though. Evolution is a process that works a the gene-level. A gene that makes its carrier more likely to reproduce and keep its offspring alive will over time propagate and replace genes that are less likely to do so. This is a simple game of statistics that works regardless of whether the organism that carries the gene is a human or not.
Basically, evolution isn't about survival. It's about what genes are more likely to propagate to the next generation. You can simulate this fairly easily: If you have a completely stable population (the average person produces one offspring), and a gene that makes e.g. 10 % of the population produce on average 0.99 offspring, you'll see that after a certain number of generations that gene is drowned out and eventually extinguished. Any gene that isn't extinguished has survived because it doesn't put its carrier at a big enough disadvantage to be extinguished.