The DIY designer baby project funded with Bitcoin
The DIY designer baby project funded with Bitcoin
For a few years now, Bishop, a 29-year-old programmer and Bitcoin investor, has been leaving a trail of comments about human “enhancement” on the web. He’s a transhumanist, which means he thinks humans can be improved in profound ways by technology. He’d long exhorted others to do something about the human condition.
Now, he had decided to do it himself.
According to the e-mail, sent in May, Bishop and his partner in the enterprise, Max Berry, a former biotech company lab scientist, were “starting a company focused on the production of designer babies and human germline genetic engineering.” He noted that “lab work has started” and “we have an initial parent-couple customer.”
He said he wanted ethics advice to help win the endorsement of a prominent geneticist, George Church of Harvard University, whose tally of potential genetic enhancements—a scroll of genes with names like PCSK9 and CCR5, presented in dozens of talks—has been called the “wish list” for a post-human era.
Bishop’s hope is to make these possibilities real.
A COPY OF HIS BUSINESS PROPOSAL SAYS HIS VENTURE PLANS TO LET PARENTS HAVE TRANSGENIC CHILDREN WHO CAN “GROW MUSCLE WITHOUT WEIGHTLIFTING,” WHO POSSESS GENES FROM LONG-LIVED “SUPERCENTENARIANS,” OR WHO ARE ENDOWED WITH THE AB+ BLOOD TYPE, MEANING THEY COULD RECEIVE A TRANSFUSION FROM ANYONE.
While new guidelines and public scolding may keep professional scientists with government grants in check, they don’t help with people like Bishop, a “relatively well-known ‘Do-It-Yourself biohacker’” (according to his résumé) who has spent thousands of dollars on furthering his own vision for adding genetic superpowers to newborns.
Several weeks ago, a concerned individual sent me a copy of fund-raising slides outlining Bishop’s business proposal, which contains projections of billions in revenue from creating hundreds of thousands of enhanced babies. This person, who asked to remain anonymous, was unsure whether it was “bullshit” or “horrifyingly plausible.” The individual expressed concern that transhumanists were going to try to put their ideas for improving the species into action, and felt it was time to blow the whistle on Bishop.
According to Bishop’s slides, designer humans wouldn’t be created as they were in China, by injecting gene-editing molecules into an egg at the moment of fertilization. Instead, in a hack that will make your eyes cross, the proposal envisions performing gene therapy on the testicles of a male volunteer. That way, sperm carrying DNA enhancements could be used to get a woman pregnant. According to the plan, Bishop and Berry think that with $2 million, they can move quickly from animal tests to a first volunteer. “Outcome: First human with transgenic sperm, and we begin taking pre-orders,” says the funding slide.
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