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this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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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.
Many genetic disorders persist in the human population because they can confer a genetic advantage.
Sickle cell anemia carriers are resistant to malaria.
Tay Sachs carriers are resistant to tuberculosis.
Huntington disease carriers have less cancer risk.
This is illegal to do in most countries because we don't want to fuck around and find out with the human genome, which is full of remnants of ancient viruses.
As a starter, I'm extremely sceptical of modifying the genome of embryos (as I hope was clear from my comment). Like you said, there's plenty of defects that can have advantageous sides in addition to the negative sides. My point is that the only way this could even conceivably be ethical to do, is if it was used to remove diseases.
I believe there's already a procedure they do to remove a disease carried in the mother's mitochondria. I heard about a rare disease from my dentist the other day that causes people to never grow any teeth. I'm saying that if this is done, then the only ethical thing to do is use it for population-wide removal of severe diseases with no known positive sides, and even that can be dubious (as you point out).
The precision of gene editing has been vastly oversold.
We already genetically other species successfully. I don't expect humanity to be that much different.
It also depends on what the generic modification is. I expect that the current state of the art has less to do with adding novel genes and more to do with removing and replacing known genes which cause disabilities.
The technology to do this without unintended off targets does not exist.
Yeah, but I'd suspect that a couple who want a child and has a high risk of having a child with a generic disorder might choose to go with generic manipulation over a natural birth.
The solution is pre implantation genetic diagnosis. Eggs are fertilized in vitro, screened, and only the healthy embryos are implanted back in mothers.
This has been a procedure for about 25 years. It ends the inheritance of the disease in that family forever.
No! Danger! The unknown! FEEEAAAR!!
It's not the unknown, off target editing is a known problem.
Thanks for the ignorant comment.