It’s hard to wrap your head around, but mankind now controls the evolution of all living things, including ourselves. Natural selection and random mutation are adages. Un-natural selection and non-random mutation are the new reality, coded.
It’s been this way for a while. Back in 2018, the MIT Technology Review posted a bombshell report on the genetic modification of embryos that are now children.
When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present.
It was the invention of a powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.
Now, it appears it may already be happening. (Source: technologyreview.com)
It happened. Here’s the timeline:
Human gene editing
March 2015: Chinese researchers become the first to edit genes in a human embryo.
June 2016: He Jiankui launches a project to edit genes in human embryos, with the goal of a live birth.
March 2017: He starts recruiting couples (each with an HIV-positive father) for the experiments.
Early November 2018: Gene-edited twin girls are reportedly born, and a second pregnancy with a third gene-edited embryo is established.
25–26 November 2018: The MIT Technology Review reveals the existence of the research program; the Associated Press quickly goes public with the story of the girls’ birth.
28 November 2018: He offers details about his work at a gene-editing summit in Hong Kong and is roundly criticized.
November–December 2018: China’s National Health Commission orders an investigation into He’s work.
January 2019: He is censured by the Guangdong health ministry and fired from his university.
18 March 2019: A World Health Organization committee will meet to set guidelines for human gene editing.
August 2019: Third gene-edited baby expected. (Born).
December 18, 2018: Dr. David Baltimore, geneticist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, on germline editing:
Because germline editing involves making alterations in the genome that would be passed down through the generations, it should only be done when we have a clear idea of what the consequences of the gene alterations will be. Right now, I believe that limits the use of germline alteration to genes with predictable behaviors, like that which causes Huntington's disease.
Some people oppose gene alteration on basically religious grounds. They would say there should never be gene modification. For instance, if you believe that humans are perfect, then you may not want to modify them even if they're not healthy.
Then there are, I think, lots of other people who believe that if there is a way to make the lives of people better, we should do it. Those people now have to make another distinction: that distinction is between a modification that is only in your own body and a modification that is inherited by your offspring. That's a fundamental difference, not because of the mechanics of it but because of the moral status of the individual; by modifying the genes, have you modified some essence of the individual? Again, there are people on both sides of that question.
We're going to debate these questions over the next years and decades, and there are always going to be people on both sides of the issue. We will have to decide to go one way or another. I think it's pretty clear where I would go, but I don't have any more important status than anybody else in this discussion, and so it really will come down to what the majority of people think is the right way to behave. (Source: caltech.edu)
September 9, 2025, Wired magazine:
The world of pregnancy is going to radically change, predicts Noor Siddiqui. “I think that the default way people are going to choose to have kids is via IVF and embryo screening,” she said at the WIRED Health summit last week. “There’s just a massive amount of risk that you can take off of the table.”
Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of Orchid, a biotech company that offers whole-genome screening of embryos for IVF. By analyzing the DNA of different embryos before selecting which one to implant, Orchid says, parents can lower the risk their children grow up affected by conditions with a genetic basis. Siddiqui was speaking with George Church—a pioneer in genomics and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School—at the summit in Boston, exploring the promise and potential of whole-genome sequencing.
An estimated 4 percent of people worldwide have a disease that’s caused by a single genetic mutation. With embryo screening, “these monogenic diseases can be just completely avoided,” Siddiqui said. On top of this, roughly half the world’s population suffers from a chronic disease with at least some genetic basis. Analyze five embryos ahead of implanting one, Siddiqui said, and “you can now mitigate the genetic component of that risk by these double-digit numbers. You’re talking about in the worst case 30 percent and in the best case up to 80 percent.” (Sources: wired.com, linkedin.com, orchidhealth.com, wyss.harvard.edu, sciencedirect.com. Italics mine.)
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