OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his new husband, Oliver Mulherin, have joined Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in backing a controversial new Silicon Valley startup called Preventive, a company openly pursuing CRISPR-based embryo gene editing to “end hereditary disease.”
Behind the polished language lies a darker reality: this marks the first step toward commercialized designer babies, a form of genetic engineering explicitly banned under U.S. law and condemned across most of the world.
Preventive has raised $30 million, established a lab in San Francisco, and is exploring foreign jurisdictions like the UAE, where such experiments might move forward under looser oversight.
Founder Lucas Harrington, a protégé of CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna, insists the company isn’t yet implanting edited embryos, but acknowledges active research on altering human life at its earliest stage.
Mulherin described the couple’s investment as an effort to “help families avoid genetic illness.” While that is obviously a noble goal, the reality is not.
How many of the first iterations of GMO children will have to suffer in the process? An untold number.
Even if only one child is born through this technology, that individual’s descendants could pass altered genes through future generations—creating ripple effects that no one can predict or control. Once genetically modified humans begin to reproduce, the long-term outcomes for humanity become impossible to contain.
Unfortunately, this is not speculation. A similar situation is already underway thanks to the mass administered COVID-19 mRNA gene therapy injections:
This path leads inevitably to the commodification of human reproduction, where wealthy parents can select preferred traits while failed “prototypes” are quietly discarded. When scientists and billionaires play God, the result is usually tragedy. The GMO humans will undoubtedly face severe health consequences throughout their lifetimes.
We have seen this story before in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein believed he was advancing humanity, but instead he unleashed a creature he could neither guide nor contain. What began as an experiment in human perfection ended in horror and isolation.
In the twenty-first century, the monster is not stitched together from corpses but assembled from code, chromosomes, and venture capital. Silicon Valley’s new “creators” are convinced they can improve upon nature itself. Yet, like Frankenstein, they fail to grasp the full moral weight of what they are summoning into existence.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
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IPAK-EDU is grateful to FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse) as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More
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