Embryo gene editing: a secret project in Silicon Valley?

In November 2018, the Chinese geneticist He Jiankui, associate professor on leave from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen (China), stunned the world – academia and beyond – by announcing that he had conducted, privately and unaware of the University, the first attempt at gene editing on embryos which resulted in a pregnancy and birth. Two little twins were born who, on paperthey must have possessed a genetic trait that some people have naturally, and which confers increased resistance to the HIV virus.

It later became known that the first human beings born with genetically modified DNA due to the scientist’s reckless decision were not two, but three (a third girl would have been born a few months after the twins) and that the genome editing carried out with the CRISPR technique by Jiankui had given uncertain results. For his experiment, illegal and contrary to all national and international ethical standards, the scientist served three years in prison on charges of illegal practice of medicine.

Let’s now leap forward to 2025: the news, reported by the US newspaper, came from a few days ago Wall Street Journalaccording to which a Californian startup – Preventive – would have worked in secret to create a genetically modified embryo to give birth to a child already protected from a hereditary disease. According to the newspaper, the San Francisco company has also identified a couple affected by a transmissible genetic disease interested in participating in the experiment, and is moving to conduct the experiment outside the United States, where (as in most of the world), this type of gene editing is prohibited and illegal.

Gene editing today represents hope against rare diseases because it can correct DNA mutations, even at multiple points and at the level of a single letter. Its use has been authorized for some rare pathologies that affect millions of people around the world (such as sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia, two blood diseases, or spinal muscular atrophy, a neuromuscular pathology), or, more recently, for personalized gene therapies, i.e. designed specifically for the genetic sequence of a patient and not valid for anyone else. In any case, these forms of gene editing, first of all the Nobel CRISPR-Cas9 technique, occur and have occurred After the birth.

Gene editing on gametes, i.e. on egg and sperm cells intended for conception, or on embryos intended for implantation, is not considered desirable from an ethical or medical point of view, so much so that scientists have long called for an international moratorium on experiments of this type.

Its practice is banned in most countries, because any mutations made to the DNA would end up being passed on to subsequent generations, as would any unwanted changes.

Furthermore, the outcomes of these mutations are unpredictable, and the intention, even if born with noble aims, to create healthy embryos from the start, would risk, in the hands of private individuals acting for profit and without official rules, derailing the possibility of tailor-made future babies, with desirable somatic or cognitive traits: a modern and high-tech version of eugenics.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Preventive project would be financed by Sam Altman of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, her husband Oliver Mulherin and Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Also according to the newspaper, the company would have turned to countries with more “flexible” regulations in this sector, with particular attention to the United Arab Emirates, with the idea of ​​acting secretly and then putting the scientific community in front of a fait accompli, a bit like He Jiankui had done.

After the paper’s release, Preventive called accusations that it had already chosen the candidate couple “completely false”, although it admitted that it was focused on research to prove “the safety of embryo editing” before this technology can be implemented. In fact, she admitted that she is engaged in extensive research in the sector although she has no intention of rushing things.

However, the interest shown by Preventive is not an isolated case. Several Silicon Valley companies are trying to design and commercialize reproductive genetic technologies – primarily genetic screening tools that sift through an embryo’s entire genome and calculate a polygenic risk score, the genetic predisposition to develop certain diseases in the future.

The goal? Working on a next generation of children who are more protected from hereditary diseases (but also more intelligent, less anxious… and then?). Perfect children of millionaires who would like to never grow old.