Preventive, Backed by Sam Altman and Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Pushes CRISPR Embryo Editing Overseas
In the United States and most countries, gene-edited babies are explicitly banned. Yet, a group of Silicon Valley tech billionaires and startups are working to make it a reality. One of the most watched among them is Preventive, a startup backed by Sam Altman and his husband, along with Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase.
Preventive’s goal is to use CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies at the embryo stage to correct genes that cause severe hereditary diseases—so children can be born free of them. Since the U.S. FDA isn’t even allowed to accept clinical trial applications for such work, Preventive is seeking countries with looser regulations, like the UAE, to conduct research.
Many critics worry that the technology poses huge risks, including unintended genetic changes passed down to future generations, and that private companies, without public debate or proper oversight, could usher in a new era of human experimentation steeped in eugenics.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Armstrong once imagined secretly creating a healthy gene-edited baby to shock the world with a single dramatic reveal. Though he later denied any plan to do this, his open discussions about “Gattaca-style IVF technology stacks” and accelerating human evolution have unnerved many scientists.
Meanwhile, another front has already hit the market: polygenic embryo screening services. Companies like Orchid, Genomic Prediction, Nucleus Genomics, and Herasight extract DNA from IVF embryos and use statistical models to estimate the likelihood of future diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and diabetes—and even predict potential IQ, height, anxiety levels, and baldness risk.
These tests cost anywhere from $2,500 per embryo to $50,000 for 100 embryos, with investors including Armstrong, Peter Thiel, Alexis Ohanian, and Vitalik Buterin, among other Silicon Valley figures.
Supporters claim it’s about reducing disease risks. Critics argue it’s corporate eugenics disguised as cutting-edge science, especially since current genetics research isn’t advanced enough to make such risk scores reliable.
More radical companies—like Preventive, Manhattan Genomics, and Bootstrap Bio—want to take it a step further: directly editing embryo DNA to create truly genetically rewritten humans.
In a landscape filled with technical, ethical, and legal uncertainty, these billionaire-funded experiments could ultimately determine who gets to decide what the next generation of humans will look like.
$CRISPR Therapeutics AG(CRSP)$
@TigerStars @TigerObserver @Daily_Discussion @Tiger_comments @TigerPM
Comments